Summarize and humanize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in EnglishFew players, globally, have the notoriety of Kevin De Bruyne. The Manchester City midfielder is at the tail end of one of the most remarkable runs in international soccer history, having made himself a household name in the English Premier League and abroad. De Bruyne has had no shortage of suitors since announcing that he’ll be departing City at the end of this season.In Major League Soccer, Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami has long been attached to De Bruyne, as it is to nearly every aging global megastar. That speculation turned to reality this week when it was revealed that Miami has his “Discovery Rights.”Discovery Rights?The phrase will probably be familiar to MLS fans who follow the league closely. Understanding the roster rules and regulations of MLS requires a crash course in phraseology: TAM, GAM, U22, GA, designated and homegrown players, the list goes on and on. Most of these initiatives are complicated but well-meaning devices used to try to maintain parity among the league’s biggest-spending teams and its more thrifty ones, which they do to varying degrees of success.Discovery rights, though, feel distinctly absurd amongst all of these mechanisms. Put simply, they allow an MLS team to call “dibs” on any player who meets certain criteria, up to and including some of soccer’s biggest names, like de Bruyne. Almost every massive star who has passed through MLS — including Messi — was subject to the process.It’s a device that exists nowhere else in the sport, so it’s a worthwhile exercise to unpack exactly what it is, for the uninitiated.Why does this exist and how does it work?MLS was founded in 1996 and for much of its early history, the league office handled all player contracts. Discovery rights existed from the league’s inception, remembered former U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati, with teams bringing desired players to the league. “You have to remember,” said Gulati, a formative figure in the early history of the league, “we were making stuff up as we went along.”MLS, with its “single entity” structure, still owns all player contracts and all of its teams, with investors operating each franchise. The job of negotiating contracts and finding players, though, was long ago handed off to clubs, necessitating the adoption of a more formal mechanism.The idea behind discovery rights is simple enough: It’s designed to give smaller-market teams a chance to sign desirable players (if they can afford them) and it’s also designed to keep the league’s richest franchises from entering into a bidding war over a specific player, which would drive the player’s value up.
Inter Miami’s star-studded roster, led by Lionel Messi, would be further boosted by Kevin De Bruyne. (Luke Hales / Getty Images)Initially, clubs were allowed to place 10 players each on a “discovery list.” That number has since been reduced to five. Clubs can change the list as frequently as they like, and the list is kept under wraps, so clubs aren’t aware of players that are on another club’s list.Clubs cannot just place any player on their discovery list — there are guidelines to this ridiculousness. Per MLS’ 2025 roster rules and regulations, players eligible for the list can’t be under contract to the league and they can’t be subject to another of the league’s assignment mechanisms (the MLS SuperDraft, for example). Players who previously played in MLS but were waived or terminated can’t be added to the list, and underage players can’t either, nor can free agents.Clubs can have the same player on their respective discovery lists, but the club who filed the claim first has priority in terms of signing him. Curiously, if two clubs put a particular player on their discovery list on the same day, the club with the lower points-per-game in the current MLS season gets priority. Who knew?If a particular club wants to sign a player on another club’s discovery list, it can offer the rights-holding club $50,000 of allocation money for the player’s rights. The club that holds the player’s rights then gets a five-day window (three days in the secondary transfer window) to either take the deal and hand over the rights to the player or make said player a “genuine, objectively reasonable offer.”The league has special rules surrounding the highest-value targets, MLS’ so-called “designated players.” If a team is to file a discovery claim on a high-profile target, MLS will do due diligence into whether it has the financial means to sign the player and whether it intends to if an agreement can be reached. While MLS has grown in leaps and bounds over the years, the reality remains that only a handful of its biggest teams in its biggest markets can afford a global superstar.Does it ever go wrong?Clubs and player agents have always played fast and loose with discovery rights, and over the years, there have been a number of high-profile cases where the rules were shirked.In 2016, when D.C. United was engaged in talks with former AC Milan midfielder Antonio Nocerino, Orlando City made its own overtures, offering him a sizably larger contract. Nocerino, though, was on United’s discovery list. Orlando’s approach gave Nocerino additional leverage in negotiations with D.C., and contract talks stalled out. With United threatening a grievance — and Orlando facing a potential fine from the league — the Florida side ponied up a sizable chunk of allocation money for Nocerino’s rights.Players, too, have raised issues at the process. In 2023, now-former Atlanta United goalkeeper Josh Cohen was approached by the club, which had him on its discovery list. Atlanta, Cohen alleged, made him an offer far below market value and intended to place him on its USL roster, with Atlanta United 2. The league deemed the offer a legitimate one, and Cohen’s representation filed a grievance with the league. The two sides eventually came to an agreement, with Cohen joining Atlanta for a season before moving on.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s move to the LA Galaxy couldn’t happen until his discovery rights were negotiated with Philadelphia. (Shaun Clark / Getty Images)Zlatan Ibrahimovic spent a memorable, two-year stretch with the LA Galaxy in MLS, but he easily could have played for the Philadelphia Union. If that sounds unrealistic to you, you’re not the only one — but Zlatan was on the Union’s discovery list. In his case, the Union weren’t even compensated by the Galaxy, as the league determined that notoriously thrifty Philadelphia didn’t have the resources to meet his market value.Ibrahimovic was only ever going to play in Los Angeles, and Chelsea legend Didier Drogba also chose where to play, preferring the Montreal Impact, which plays in a city that predominantly speaks French, to the Chicago Fire. Montreal sent around $100,000 of allocation money for Drogba’s rights to the Fire, who’d been negotiating with Drogba for a month when Montreal entered the fray.More recently, the Galaxy paid FC Charlotte a reported $400,000 for the discovery rights to former Borussia Dortmund striker Marco Reus.Charlotte could’ve afforded to sign Reus, but De Bruyne is a different case altogether. It feels realistic to say that Miami may well be one of a small handful of MLS teams — maybe the only one — who could afford the Belgian’s services.(Top photo: Justin Tallis / AFP via Getty Images)
