The Fire have $449,707 in GAM. What does this mean for the roster?

A handful of days before Christmas, MLS gave journalists who cover the league or its teams and the most ardent fans – “sickos,” as longtime league personality Andrew Wiebe has affectionately called them – an early gift by releasing the amount of general allocation money (GAM) that each team had available. Today, three weeks into the league season, the league has updated the numbers.

Per today’s release, accurate as of the roster compliant date just before the 2025 season kicked off, the team has $449,707 in available GAM, good for 23rd in the 30 team league, with figures ranging from the LA Galaxy, who have $0 available at one end, and New York City FC, with just over $4.2 million available, at the other. The Fire’s figure improvement, relatively, over where the team was at the first release in December, when the team’s $2.9 million in available GAM, with numbers ranging from $2 million for Houston to $6.5 million for Atlanta put them in 26th place.

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The number suggests that the Fire do have some maneuvering room to make player acquisitions, but not, at present, enough to significantly overhaul the roster.

Combined with the public release of team roster profiles – most recently updated by the league just before the start of the season and salary information released in the late spring and early fall by the MLS Players Association, fans now have a fuller – though still significantly incomplete – picture of how much flexibility a team has to add players to their roster at different price points.

While MLS observers still don’t have nearly as much public information as do those in other leagues like the NFL, NBA or MLB, where cap management has almost become a separate spectator sport, the release GAM information enables a fuller picture of clubs cap situation than was possible before. There are, however, significant parts of a team’s cap situation which remain opaque, and a lot of information that is relevant for a team’s overall cap situation is not available to the public.

What is GAM and why does it matter?

(If you know this, unfortunately, you may have MLS sicko status and there is no known cure, but feel free to skip ahead.)

MLS, like most sports leagues in North America, has a salary cap that restricts what teams can spend on players. In MLS, however, the official cap represents just a small fraction of the actual team wage bill. A player’s cap includes both salaries as well as player acquisition costs like transfer fees. GAM is one of several tools that teams can use to spend more than the cap number.

The shortest answer is that GAM adds to the cap, allowing teams to spend above it. As is always the case with MLS, there are numerous restrictions on its usage: Some GAM expires. It can only be used on players whose cap hit is up to a certain number as negotiated in the bargaining agreement with players. And there are limits as to how much GAM can be used to offset any given player contract's cap hit.

The mechanics are complicated, but think of it this way: You walk into a store and the salary cap represents the amount of money in your wallet (or space under your spending limit on your credit card). As you shop, the price tags on everything in your cart end up being a lot higher than the amount of money you can spend – but that’s OK, because at checkout time, you have coupons.

GAM is a coupon that lets you take the cost of a player - say, $500,000 – and reduce it. You could use say, $200,000 in GAM and then the player’s cap hit would be $300,000. That $300,000 is the amount that would actually hit your wallet. There are various other "coupons" available: a “Designated Player” (DP) coupon lets you get any item you want and pay only a set amount – $743,750 in 2025 – come checkout time. That is how Inter Miami is able to have Lionel Messi, who is slated to make over $20 million this year, on a roster with a “salary cap” of under $6 million. And attention shoppers – you’re allowed to reduce that $743,750 cap hit even further using GAM.

GAM is one of two kinds of allocation money (the other is Targeted Allocation Money), and they are just one of an array management mechanisms alongside others like DPs and U22 Initiative players. While there are many restrictions on its use, GAM is overall simplest, the most flexible way to reduce the salary cap hit for players.

As such, knowing how much available GAM a team has gives us some indication about their capacity to add players under the salary cap, but it is far from a complete picture: TAM information is not public, as one notable example.

What does the Fire’s GAM position tell us about the state of the roster?

When Fire Head Coach and Director of Football Gregg Berhalter joined the Fire after the 2024 season, he inherited a roster that was both expensive and underperforming. At the start of that year, the team needed to a lot of maneuvering to have a roster compliant with the league’s salary cap.

While a handful of the Fire’s player contracts expired at the end of the season, the team still had a number of players on expensive contracts that had significantly underperformed their cap hits since coming to Chicago. Berhalter and the Fire staff – some of whom were new, some of whom, like Eddie Rock, the Fire’s Head of Strategy whose cap-management abilities are very well-regarded around the league, remained – began to rework the Fire roster.

The new front office found creative ways to move on from expensive contracts like that of Gastón Giménez which had previously seemed almost unmoveable. Ultimately, they turned over about half the Fire’s roster, bringing in players like new DP Jonathan Bamba alongside other high-level acquisitions like attacker Philip Zinckernagel and new U22 Initiative right back Leonardo Barroso around the way.

All of those new acquisitions, however, affected the cap. In addition, while the most flagrant contracts are gone, Berhalter inherited a situation where many returning players are paid at or near the top of players with comparable production around the league, limiting the team’s cap flexibility.

Teams are now given a choice in roster construction paths. They can select three DP slots and 3 U22 slots, or they can have 2 DP slots, 4 U22 slots and receive $2 million in GAM. Ultimately, the Fire split the difference, electing to have got the 2 DP/4 U22 model, but MIR97 Media has been informed that the figures released by the league include only $1 million of that GAM. Should the Fire continue with the 2 DP/4 U22 model, they will have an extra $1m in GAM as of the start of the league’s summer transfer window.

Can the team add new players or make new signings?

Yes, with some caveats. The Fire have available spots on the senior roster, and MLS’s transfer window is open until April 23, allowing teams can continue to make changes until that date. After that, the roster is basically locked until the summer window opens.

Berhalter has said that the team is actively looking to bolster the squad in this window. To do so, they can use the available GAM, or one of several other roster mechanisms. While the team’s available GAM makes it unlikely that they buy a new starting-level player from overseas using that mechanism, players on loan are often more cap-friendly. Rominigue Kouamé was brought in on loan, a move which makes his salary impact smaller than if the team had purchased him outright, although the Fire do have a purchase option on the midfielder.

In addition, team’s TAM positions are not public. TAM is more heavily restricted than GAM: It cannot be traded to other teams, and can only be used on players with fairly significant cap hits – those at the middle-high end of the roster like Kellyn Acosta and Philip Zinckernagel.

Notably, the team currently has two available U22 initiative slots, which allows teams to spend unlimited amounts on transfers and pay the player up to around $750,000 in salary with a minimal cap hit – $150,000 or $200,000, depending on the player’s age. While U22 signings are, by definition, less proven than other options, it also presents an opportunity to bring in potentially game-changing talent in a cap friendly manner.

Because the team has selected the 2 DP/4 U22 model, they cannot add a third designated player until the summer window. Sources have told MIR97 Media that the present plan is to add a third DP in that window, and the Fire retain the cap space to do so. If that plan changes, the team will receive an additional $1m in GAM which they can use to bolster the squad at that stage.

Can the Fire acquire more GAM?

Yes. Teams are given a set amount of GAM at the beginning of each season, but they can acquire more throughout the year in a number of ways. The simplest mechanism is that GAM can be traded for players or other assets like international slots or draft picks.

Teams can also convert up to $3 million of the proceeds from cash player sales in or outside the league into GAM every season.

While the Fire did sell Federico Navarro to Club Atlético Rosario Central in late January, his transfer fee did not significantly change the team’s GAM position because of his high acquisition costs when he arrived in Chicago. The team did receive GAM when the Rapids sold former Fire defender Miguel Ángel Navarro to Club Atlético Talleres in the winter. The Fire retained a significant sell-on percentage for Navarro, and sources have told MIR97 Media that the team netted about a half million dollars from the sale.

The Fire’s sell-on percentage from the blockbuster deal that sent Jhon Durán to Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia, however, did not give the team a GAM windfall, as the team had already maximized its GAM from that sale when they moved him to Aston Villa in 2023. Instead, the Fire’s portion of the proceeds was sent to the team in cash.

That means that in theory, a player sale could give the team around $2.5 million in additional GAM this season. Such a move would both net GAM as well as clear cap space as the player’s salary was moved off the books.

The team can clear cap space by trading players. For players on expensive contracts, the team can sweeten the deal by agreeing to retain part of the player’s salary on their salary cap. For example, if a player is slated to make $500,000, the Fire could agree to hold $100,000 of the player’s cap hit on their roster in a trade, which would then free up a roster slot and $400,000 in cap space.

Finally, the player can free up the cap and roster space occupied by one player by putting him on the Season Ending Injury (SEI) list, but doing so will prevent their return to the pitch for the rest of 2025. Teams have two buyouts per year. The Fire utilized one buyout in mid-February when they placed Arnaud Souquet on waivers. The team elected to use the second buyout on the contract termination of Gastón Giménez which occurred at the end of 2024, which removes any cap hit from money given to the player as part of his departure.