It would not be January without a number of 30-somethings being linked to a move to Major League Soccer. This has been a part of MLS discourse since David Beckham, at age 32, and Cuauhtémoc Blanco, at 34, headlined the first wave of designated players arriving in 2007.
Some of the talk seems far-fetched. Neymar’s reported demand for a bounty from the Chicago Fire as he looks to depart Saudi Arabia at age 32 is most likely one such example. But Charlotte FC is working to sign Wilfried Zaha, also 32, and the New York Red Bulls used a designated player slot last month on 35-year-old Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting. (Each team is allowed three players whose wages can exceed the salary cap.)
In the 2024 MLS season, Inter Miami topped the regular-season standings with a team led by Lionel Messi and Luis Suárez, both 37, and 36-year-old Sergio Busquets. Christian Benteke, now 34, won the league’s Golden Boot with 23 goals for DC United.
But is this the legacy of Messi’s move to Miami? A revival of the old “MLS is a retirement league” tag? Far from it.
The league’s approach to recruitment has trended far more youthfully over the past decade, which has made MLS’ relevance in the global transfer market more stable than ever.
Let’s start with one point of clarification: MLS teams can win with veterans among their ranks, and often do.
Los Angeles FC won its first MLS Cup in 2022 in part because of Carlos Vela, Gareth Bale (both 33 at the time) and Giorgio Chiellini (38 at the time). The Los Angeles Galaxy ended a decade-long title drought in December with 35-year-old Marco Reus coming off the bench. And then you have Inter Miami.
But each of those teams also had top performers from a younger demographic.
Los Angeles FC’s attack has been led in recent seasons by Denis Bouanga, who arrived from St.-Étienne in 2022 at age 27, and the 23-year-old Pole Mateusz Bogusz. The Galaxy were built around Riqui Puig, who left Barcelona just before his 23rd birthday, in August 2022; 23-year-old Brazilian winger Gabriel Pec; and Ghanaian Joseph Paintsil, 26. The Columbus Crew won the MLS title in 2023 led by Cucho Hernández, who will turn 26 in April.
This is not to say that players such as Neymar, Zaha or 33-year-old Kevin De Bruyne do not have a place in the league anymore. But instead of propping up the league, as Beckham, Blanco and Thierry Henry (who turned 33 two weeks after his debut) did over a decade ago, these aging players are now merely a part of a more well-rounded approach to roster building.
Since the advent of the designated player rule in 2007, MLS has continually updated its procedures to help teams assimilate into the global market.
There was the start of allocation money — league-issued funds that gave teams more flexibility within the salary cap. There was the U22 Initiative, which allowed teams to both sign designated players (who hit the cap at a lower rate, no matter their age) and players with developmental upside for future sales. Perhaps most important for the sake of sustainability, there was the uniform implementation of academy systems, so clubs could foster homegrown talent.
None of these evolutions were made with an eye on aging icons. Each encourages teams to figure out the best route to build a winning squad within constraints. They have also helped MLS teams better contend in the global market for a larger number of players who still have suitors in other leagues. They have also paid off. Atlanta United profited off Thiago Almada and Caleb Wiley last summer. The Fire moved Jhon Durán and Gabriel Slonina to Europe for large sums in 2023.
They have also allowed teams to be nimble amid other shifts in the transfer landscape.
Large European clubs have become increasingly comfortable buying promising young players from other countries. Their scouting and analytics departments are more robust and can assess rising talents more confidently, while the rise of multiple-club soccer groups ensures loan destinations to aid these players’ development. South American clubs that can move young players are increasingly using those fees to lure 20-somethings who left to play in other nations back home.
This used to be the role of leagues like MLS: steppingstones between a boyhood club and the highest levels while providing safe landing spots for returning domestic talents in their late 20s and beyond. With valuations on teenage prodigies skyrocketing and the limited tenure possible for veterans unchanging, MLS teams have largely focused on the rich and bountiful pasture in between: established professionals in their 20s who are ready to be leading men in a league such as MLS, but may not be ready for Europe’s brightest lights.
Puig and Hernández are the new standard-bearers for a designated player: one who can lead a title contender immediately and for years to come.
If presented with the choice of 500 to 900 minutes per season for a Champions League team in Europe — where your value has more to do with homegrown quotas than your quality of play — or more than 2,000 minutes as the focal point of a team in an established league on the other side of the Atlantic with world-class facilities, some players will inevitably have their heads turned.
Last week, MLS issued the latest update to its rule book.
Most notable among the changes was the start of an internal transfer market, allowing teams to exchange players for cash instead of cobbling together league-specific assets and hoping the package meets a possible seller’s valuation. It will give players more avenues to leave clubs if things go south and help teams broker deals with partners who can be confident the player involved will be able to handle the oddities of life in MLS.
Duncan McGuire is a cautionary tale. Last winter, he was set to sign with Blackburn Rovers in England’s second-level Championship for an initial fee nearing $4 million. When Blackburn failed to submit the requisite paperwork in time, the move fell apart and McGuire remained with Orlando City, which had already signed his expected replacement: Luis Muriel of Atalanta in Italy’s top-flight Serie A.
Other MLS teams came calling, but given the late stage of the league’s offseason, the best many could do was hope to bring McGuire in on loan. That was not an appealing consolation for Orlando, especially as Blackburn kept scouting him after making clear their seven-figure valuation.
Now, teams can put themselves in the same marketplace as teams from abroad. So if top players voiced displeasure about their current clubs, a rival could come in, meet that team’s valuation and get themselves a proven MLS player. These players will have an incentive to hear these suitors out, as the MLS Players Association negotiated a clause into the internal cash transfer rule that guarantees a transferred player 10% of the total fee.
One of MLS’ major barriers to entry for many soccer fans has been the multitude of rules that are unique to the North American circuit. Trades, mechanisms and player rights are standard in other American sports but require a steep learning curve to confidently discuss player movement and roster building.
The new rules are just the start of a more accessible MLS. While rigid limitations helped the league find stability in the 2000s and 2010s, they are now holding it back. Transparency and accessibility are the vital next steps.
Aging icons will still have a role to play, but over a decade of evolution, MLS is far less reliant on those headline generators to boost its reputation.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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