The USA Major League Soccer, founded in 1996, is no longer new to the world and now has to start making changes to improve the quality of the league.

Right now there are three problems in MLS that need to be fixed in order for the league to grow. The first is the MLS salary cap ($2 million). Secondly, the DP rule. And last, the roster amount.

The MLS is not a developmental league, but it seems to act like it with a salary cap of $2 million. This is football—look at the amount of money teams are spending to better themselves because they want to be taken seriously.

A France U-21 player was just bought for $3 million—in MLS, that would call for a DP spot, something that is really unacceptable.

Let's take a look at these three problems and see how the MLS can change them for the better and make the quality of the league better.

MLS Salary Cap

The current MLS salary cap is aproximately $2.3 million. Yea that's not a lot for any team at any level. The MLS, with the current salary cap is really restricting itself from becoming a better league and bringing in better talent, even though it might cost more.

Now does the MLS need to have a salary cap? Yes, for now and at least for a few more years so that the league doesn't blow up—that would be a disaster waiting to happen.

The MLS needs to definitely raise the salary cap because at this rate the MLS will never grow to be anything.

I think a fair salary cap would be $10 million per team. Each team starts out with a $10 million cap limit and cannot exceed it by any means. If a team gets within $500,000 of it then they will have to sell a player or restructure a contract of certain players so that they don't go over.

Now that $10 million is for every player on the roster so owners and GMs will have to be careful. Now, a $3 million dollar transfer fee wouldn't count towards the cap but the player's salary would. So the player could make maybe $700,000 even though the transfer fee would be $3 million.

Then maybe in the future the MLS, seeing the success of the old raise would begin to raise it again but always have a cap.

Designated Player rule

This plays right into the new salary cap. Right now the MLS has what is called a Designated Player rule or what some call "The Beckham Rule" was created when the LA Galaxy and all their wisdom spent $250 million on a publicity stunt called David Beckham. LA was majorly at fault cause they had no clue how to manage a team.

The DP rules is as follows: if they player's contract goes over the $2.3 million salary cap then $400,000 of that player's contract goes against the cap and the rest comes from the owner or endorsements.

Now even with my proposed $10 million salary cap, the MLS still needs to have the DP rule. If you take out the DP rule and for example Freddie Ljungberg who makes $2.5 million per season from the Seattle Sounders FC, all of that $2.5 million would go against the cap instead of the $415,000.

So it still benefits the team and the player. That way the team could have more to spend on other players with only having a $415,000 cap hit.

Roster amount

The MLS roster went down from 28 to 24 and there is no longer a reserve league.

With a raised salary cap in this scenario the MLS roster amount should be raised back from 24 to 28 but still not have a reserve league.

With these three problems fixed there is no reason why the MLS shouldn't be a very competitive league and grow very fast the next 5-10 years.

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