Photo Kyle Grantham

San Diego’s expansion draft will happen on Wednesday, December 11 (click here for the complete rules). The new club will choose five players from the 2024 rosters of the 2024 MLS clubs (click here for the Spanish version of every club’s roster profile as of September 17). Each 2024 MLS club may lose only one player. The league will compensate for each loss with $50,000 of extra General Allocation Money.

All contracts are with the league, i. e., Major League Soccer, not the club, e. g., the Philadelphia Union. Every negotiation involves three parties, not just two. The league can refuse a contract it finds unwise or inappropriate.

Key rules from San Diego’s perspective:

• They may claim only a single player from any one club.
• Once one player has been claimed from a club’s unprotected roster, that club is eliminated from the Expansion Draft and may not lose any further players.
• San Diego may take five players.

Potential San Diego draft strategies:

• Use the player’s previously agreed contract, e.g., as Philadelphia used Sam Adeniran’s this past summer, and keep the player.
• Sign or renegotiate if necessary or desirable.
• Select the player and trade him to a third club in return for other considerations.

Key rules for Philadelphia’s specific situation:

1. Homegrown Players 25 years old and under in the year in which the Expansion Draft takes place who are on a club’s Roster at the end of the 2024 MLS Season are automatically exempt from selection.
2. Each team may protect 12 other players from their Senior and Supplemental rosters.
3. If a player’s contract expires at the end of 2024 even if out-of-contract or an option has already been declined, he will still be considered part of the club’s roster, for example Jack Elliott.
4. Clubs with four or more international players must protect at least three of them. The Union have six.

Union Homegrowns

Philadelphia’s homegrown situation for the San Diego draft is defined by rule. So the following information is fact (ages as of November 30).

Union protected and exposed

The data within the charts is unofficial but correct. The distribution of the players between the two lists is our best guess after Ernst Tanner’s end-of-season presser (ages as of November 30).

These placements between protected and exposed are guesses.

Labels explained.

• guaranteed = the club and/or MLS must pay the player’s salary whether he is playing for them or not.
• option declined = the club declined to bring the player back on the previously agreed option. The player has no say in the matter and becomes eligible for free agency, the re-entry draft, or waivers depending on age and years of service.
• option used = the club used the previously negotiated option to bring the player back. The player had no say in the matter.
• in negotiations = the club and the player are still talking.
• out of contract = the player is free to leave at the end of the year. The club cannot coerce him to stay. If the club wishes the right to continue to negotiate beyond the deadline’s expiration, it must submit a “bona fide” offer to the player and the league.
• P opt = the player has been on loan and the club holds an option to buy his contract at the end of the season. The price can be set in advance from the time of the loan or is negotiable upon its expiration.

An observation

Now that Jim Curtin has been fired on a contract guaranteed for two more years through 2026, there will be two known examples of the Union paying a coach to not coach. Brendan Burke was under contract but not coaching Union II from February of 2020 until December of that year. Sven Gartung was Union II coach from February until August and Marlon LeBlanc started that August.