Photo Eli Pearlman-Storch

Below, we attempt a hypothetical, counterfactual illustration of how the recently announced general allocation money for 2025 might affect the Philadelphia Union’s salary structure. We pay full compliments to The Athletic’s Paul Tenorio, whose recent illustration of a similar, hypothetical Inter Miami CF use (click here, paywall) leads the way for our attempt.

Philadelphia’s total GAM for 2025 was announced as $4,220,769. We expect the total will increase by $2,000,000 after they declare they will have 2 DPs and up to 4 U22s on Roster Compliance Day. 2025 TAM is $2,225,000. We expect the total allocation money available to the Union for 2025 will be roughly $8.4 million.

According to his comments at his end-of-year press conference, with that sum and perhaps more from ownership, Ernst Tanner still has to find a midfielder and a striker as well as adjust his already known contracts.

To quote the MLS website’s Armchair Analyst Matt Doyle, “In we go.”

Major League Soccer’s salary cap is often called a “soft” cap because it has major loopholes that allow its limits to be exceeded. Individual clubs may do so by spending their own money for up to six special players in addition to their own homegrowns. The league provides all clubs with extra “allocation money” to spend on both of the six specials and specific others who are not officially specials but receive more than the cap’s limits would otherwise allow, the so-called TAM players.

As far as we know, the Union will have four special players for 2025, although that may change since the 2025 roster is not yet finished. Five others will probably be TAM players using the special league allocation money to exceed official limits. And at least one other homegrown gets an extra subsidy; probably there is another.

Relevant technicalities

Over the remainder of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, the proportion between the two types of allocation money has changed. Targeted Allocation Money (TAM) is being phased out while General Allocation Money (GAM) is increasing. For the Union, that meant more TAM was available to address Tai Baribo’s early August transfer fee in 2023 than that of Danley Jean Jacques’ a year later. The two fees are said to have been the same at 1.4 million Euros each.

Salaries and transfer fees are different things. Salaries are paid to players. Transfer fees are paid to the clubs that previously owned the players’ contracts.

For an MLS player’s individual salary charge in any specific year, TAM and GAM may not be combined to buy it down. Whether they can be combined to buy down a transfer fee, we do not know. TAM players have either had their salary charge “bought down” or their transfer fee, perhaps both, although the Union seems to have had no players who required both last year.

In 2024 Jakob Glesnes’s, Kai Wagner’s, Jack Elliott’s, and Andre Blake’s salaries were bought down with TAM. Tai Baribo’s and Danley Jean Jacques’s transfer fees were also. That Baribo’s transfer fee has been spread out over more than one year seems obvious, but we have no idea in what proportions for what period. Jack McGlynn and probably Nathan Harriel are the homegrown subsidies.

In our illustration below, we assume that if someone were a TAM player in 2024, they would be one in 2025. We follow the September 17, 2024, Club Roster Profile published by the league (click here) to identify them.

The chart below uses 2025 TAM to buy down 2024 salaries. It is, therefore, necessarily counterfactual since it mixes two different years. It cannot provide accurate information because we do not yet know what 2025 salaries are. (We won’t until a month or so after the primary transfer window closes and the players’ union publishes them.)

The chart gives only a rough sketch of what reality might be like. The footnotes add cogent details. Only the 2024 base salaries and the 2025 total for TAM are known facts. We follow Paul Tenorio in using $743,750 as the floor below which salary charges higher than the salary cap’s upper limit cannot be reduced. We assume he knows that the number is the maximum individual salary budget charge, which is the term of art in the CBA.

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¹ Baribo’s transfer fee in early August of 2023 was allegedly 1.4 million Euros, unofficially. We do not know how MLS and the Union prorated the charge over the 2 ¼ year contract (not counting the option year).

² Jean Jacques’s transfer fee in early August of 2024 was allegedly also 1.4 million Euros plus $100,000 to Portland for his discovery rights. We do not know how MLS and the Union prorated the charge over the length of the 1 ¼ year contract (not counting the two option years).

³ From something Ernst Tanner said in his end-of-season press availability, Quinn Sullivan is probably a U22 Initiative Player for 2025. Because he is under 21 at the beginning of the season, his salary budget charge is $150,000 even though his actual paycheck total is higher.

⁴ Ian Glavinovich may be a TAM player. We suspect he is more likely a GAM player. His loan fee and salary may need adjusting to fit MLS salary cap parameters.

⁵ Makhanya’s salary budget charge for 2025 will be $150,000 because he will be under 21 when the season starts.

⁶ Each has signed a new contract.

⁷ We have seen nothing about Glavinovich’s compensation.

A final point

The individual clubs pay for supplemental roster salaries (slots 21-31). The salary cap rules limit salaries for those 10 or 11 players but are not paid by the league.

The league pays salaries for the 18-20 senior roster players. By memory of Philadelphia’s past rosters, only once has a salary of a few hundred of thousands, i.e., above the limits of the homegrown subsidy, been included is the Supplemental Roster. The player was Cory Burke, and we never discovered why the anomaly existed.