FORT LAUDERDALE – Major League Soccer’s investigation of Inter Miami CF’s signing of Blaise Matuidi has found that the club did breach salary cap and roster rules in acquiring the French World Cup winner in 2020.
MLS has some unique mechanisms for its salary cap and Matuidi fell under the mechanism known as Targeted Allocation Money (TAM). The league found that Matuidi was actually overpaid for such a position and as such should have been classed as a Designated Player. That meant Inter Miami CF had four designated players and thus breached the roster rules for every match after the MLS is Back tournament.
Because of this the Herons had to offload another Designated Player and it was Matias Pellegrini who paid the price for his club’s mismanagement of its own roster. Miami bought out Pellegrini’s contract and he has signed for the third division USL League One side Fort Lauderdale CF.
Fort Lauderdale CF is the Inter Miami CF reserve team, as such that is an indication that he is expecting the team to work out a way to keep him outside of a Designated Player contract. It would be surprising if he spent much, if any, time with the reserves. The team will be playing South Georgia Tormenta in the opener on Saturday but Pellegrini is not expected to be available.
MLS said that it will be announcing sanctions on Inter Miami CF shortly. There’s no precedent for this in MLS, but there are rules in the National Football League. A team going over the cap there is fined up to $5 million and can have all draft picks cancelled. That seems too small in this case, the team gained 24 points from the time Matuidi joined the side so it wouldn’t be completely out of the realm of possibility that Miami gets a 24 point deduction. In reality though MLS will issue a hefty fine and will pocket a hefty chunk of the sell-on fee from Pellegrini’s inevitable transfer out of the league in the summer. That would provide little deterrence to stop monied clubs from doing the same thing again, and MLS will have little leg to stand on if it doesn’t set a strong precedent here.
Photo courtesy Inter Miami CF
Florida Soccer Report 
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