Photo Earl Gardner

Today, Thursday, December 19, Major League Soccer announced the amounts of General Allocation Money each of the 30 clubs will receive for the 2025 season. Philadelphia will receive the eighth-most GAM for the upcoming season, a respectable ranking for a frugal club in the midst of a $75 million dollar capital project consolidating all of its facilities onto one campus on the waterfront of the Delaware River in Chester.

Philadelphia will get $4,220,769 next year. That is $1,290,769 more than the base amount each club (except expansion side San Diego) gets from the league. We have no numerical breakdown of the Union’s extra funding. Qualitatively, as the league’s announcement explains the possible sources of it are:

• Up to $3 million from eligible transfer revenue converted to GAM. (Carranza, Martinez, & Lowe, among other possibilities)
• Via trade with another MLS club or clubs, either from 2025 or previously. (For example, Matt Freese in 2023, Andres Perea in 2024, or the draft picks in 2025.)
• Failing to qualify for the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs.
• The 2024 third Designated Player charge distribution. (Eligible because Carranza was still a Young DP.)

If, however, another detail is added to the league’s announcement, the ranking changes. For the moment the Union would be second only to Atlanta for 2025 GAM.

Last summer the league created two alternative pathways to utilize one of the larger loopholes in its salary cap. The two pathways concern what it now calls its “special players,” Designated Players (DPs) and Under 22 Initiative Players (U22s).

On or before Roster Compliance Day each season, which would appear to be on or around Friday February 21st for 2025, each club must declare which of the two paths it will follow with its special players for that year. It may have three DPs and three U22s. Or, it may have two DPs, four U22s, and $2,000,000 of additional GAM.

For 2025 choosing two and four means a 68% increase in GAM for the year to $4,930,000 in total, plus whatever else a club has accrued through its own efforts.

It does not require degrees in the astrophysics of black holes to guess that Philadelphia will choose the path providing extra money.

The unofficial replacement for Jack Elliott, Argentinian Ian Glavinovich from selling club Newell’s Old Boys, is reportedly on a loan for 2025 with a purchase option. If so, he is not a DP. Philadelphia’s philosophy suggests any other additions – Tanner excluded only goalkeepers from possible additional newcomers in his end-of-year presser – would much more likely be U22s rather than DPs. Two-thirds more GAM incentivizes that pathway, heavily.

Below we chart each club’s 2025 total GAM in light of how many DPs and U22s they have as of December 19, 2024. Those numbers could easily change by Opening Day given some ownerships’ free-spending ways, e.g., Arthur Blank in Atlanta or Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment in Toronto.

At the moment — repeat, at the moment — Philadelphia will have the second-most GAM available to it in the entire league behind only Atlanta.