MLS roster rules can be arcane (available here), so clubs need a competent front office to navigate those issues in order to put the best possible product on the field. With the acquisition of Guram Kashia and the extension of Nick Lima, a few significant roster moves occurred under the radar that I thought I would highlight for the broader fanbase:
Nick Lima’s extension moves him to “Senior Roster”, which indicates its size
MLS teams still refuse to publish contract details, even though the Players Union will end up publishing them in a few months anyway, so when we see a contract extension, we usually don’t know anything about it for a while. In this case, however, he was re-designated to the club’s “Senior” roster (check out the official MLS roster page, with designations, here).
This has two implications for Quakes fans: first, it means that his salary has bumped up to at least $192,500 per year, due to the rules about Homegrown players and roster slots. That puts him in line to at least potentially be the team’s best-paid fullback, which reflects his status as the team’s best actual fullback. The second implication is that his salary may no longer be off the cap: Senior spots are traditionally on-cap, and the MLS rules around homegrown do not specify if Homegrowns are an exception to this, although there may be some salary relief that is not described publicly.
That means he is not longer quite the steal he was when he signed originally, and no longer creates quite the same flexibility in the rest of the roster. That’s more than a fair tradeoff for locking down one of the team’s best players (and a homegrown no less) for the foreseeable future.
Paul Marie designated as a loan to allow Guram Kashia to join
Players signed to an MLS team can bounce back and forth between the senior club and its USL affiliate with more or less no restrictions. However, each “bounce” doesn’t alter the senior team roster. In order to get roster relief of any kind (such as freeing up Paul Marie’s international spot), clubs need to use their single loan exception, which pulls the player off the senior roster for the year, and doesn’t allow him to rejoin or “bounce” back up.
Exactly that just happened with Paul Marie, in order to allow Guram Kashia to join. That means we won’t be seeing Marie in San Jose in 2018. For context, the club drafted Marie under the impression that he counted as a domestic player, specifically so that they wouldn’t run into this problem. However, it turned out he wasn’t, and is in the process of acquiring a green card as we speak. Based on what I know about the situation, it was the league’s mistake, but the club and the league have moved on.
I still have no idea what happened with Kevin Partida, roster-wise
It made sense to me when Kevin Partida was signed to the senior squad: he was needed in San Jose, and it’s much easier to have him be a San Jose player who you loan back down if needed, rather than the other way around. However, the official MLS roster page, which is fairly rigorously updated, never once showed him on the club roster (to this day). It was bizarre to me. I’m assuming it was a mistake.
The only reason it really matters is, especially now that he’s out with a potential long-term injury, it essentially takes out a roster spot from potential use. My only guess is that Danny Musovski, who was previously listed as a season-long loan designation (just like Marie) created a roster spot that whoever was maintaining the website just left Musovski’s name and never replaced it with Partida. I can’t be sure, however, and unless I misunderstand the rules, Marie’s loan means both Musovski and Partida are fully on the senior roster now, and cannot be replaced.
That leaves the team with no roster space at all in this summer window, unless they get rid of a player, or designate Partida as a season-ending injury. The latter would of course make sense, but it has yet to show up on the MLS site as such, so for now I’m operating under the assumption that the 30 San Jose roster spots are full.
As always, please reference my spreadsheet of estimated player salaries to see how this looks in practice. For what it’s worth, I believe the team to be more or less capped-restricted from any significant transactions, unless they move salary off the books or trade for additional allocation money.
