CONTRACT PURGATORY

MLS rules frustrate ex-Caps keeper

Remember last week when goalkeeper David Ousted reminded us how confusing, sometimes downright frustrating, Major League Soccer contract rules can be? Well, buckle up. We can explain. The former Whitecaps goalie, you’ll recall, tweeted with great frustration Dec. 15 about how his contract option was preventing teams from trading for him.

In those tweets, he left some clues. He mentioned targeted allocation money (TAM), which teams can use to reduce players’ salaries that might otherwise make them designated players, and he mentioned his option year. He said three teams had tried to pick him up, but the league said no.

It led to speculation Ousted’s contract option would have put him over the designated-player threshold.

Turns out, we were right. His option year is worth more than $600,000. Next year’s DP threshold will be a hair over $500,000. Yes, Ousted has landed in MLS contract purgatory.

If a team wanted to pick up the Danish keeper, they would have to sign him on his option-year salary, meaning they would also have to use a designated-player spot on him. It seems the three teams in question were willing to pick up his option, but wanted to apply TAM to his contract so he would no longer be considered a designated player.

The problem lies in when TAM can be applied: It’s either used when the player is signed to a new contract, like the Whitecaps have done in the past with Yordy Reyna and Cristian Techera, or when the team is signing a new designated player and needs to clear a spot already being used. (Every team gets three DP spots.)

The L.A. Galaxy, for example, already have three DPs: the dos Santos brothers and Romain Alessandrini. Since Ousted’s contract isn’t a new one — the option counts as a continuation of his current one — the first option wasn’t available.

And because the Galaxy already have three DP contracts, option No. 2 prevented Ousted from being signed at all because his contract wasn’t new.

The other reason they couldn’t have used the second option: all three are on multimillion-dollar contracts, so there’s basically no chance they could have had enough TAM to buy down their contracts anyway.

And so here’s Ousted, in limbo just over a month before 2018 MLS training camps open.

The somewhat good news for Ousted: If he goes unclaimed in the MLS re-entry draft, he’ll be a free agent and can sign with any team.