For a league that spent the better part of the last few years trying to shake the “retirement league” label, Major League Soccer has spent the last few months doing plenty to earn it back.

This summer alone, MLS has landed a string of aging global superstars who, a few years ago, would have probably been headed to a beach somewhere instead of a training ground in Chicago or Miami. Robert Lewandowski joined the Chicago Fire in late June after four seasons at Barcelon, Antoine Griezmann made his MLS debut with Orlando City around the same time, Casemiro has since joined Inter Miami, and just this week Alexis Sanchez made a bizarre move to CF Montreal. It’s a set of blockbuster signings that underscores the league’s growing pedigree, even as it raises the same old questions about what exactly the motivation is for MLS clubs to bring these players in.

Miami’s roster alone tells you a lot about where things stand. Alongside Casemiro, the club has stacked up Sergio Reguilón, Rodrigo De Paul (whose loan was recently converted into a permanent deal), and a returning Luis Suárez, who at 39 is now viewed as better suited to a super sub role than a nightly starter. Minnesota United, meanwhile, pulled off arguably the offseason’s most eyebrow raising move by signing James Rodríguez, the hero of the 2014 World Cup, on a short term deal, even though he arrived following an underwhelming spell at Club León in Liga MX. Throw in Marco Reus at LA Galaxy, Thomas Müller in Vancouver, and the pattern is pretty hard to miss. MLS front offices are once again reaching for recognizable star names on the back nine of their careers, regardless of how it might impact the play on the pitch.

None of this is inherently bad business. Star power sells tickets, jerseys, and with the 2026 World Cup having just rolled through North America, it gives casual fans a reason to tune in or show up to their local stadium. And in many cases these players are making an impact on the pitch, not just lining the purses of club executives. But it’s also exactly the kind of roster building strategy that earned MLS its reputation in the first place: a handful of marquee names surrounded by a supporting cast built on a shoestring budget.

The recurring issue isn’t really a lack of ambition from ownership groups, it’s a direct result of what is under the roster rule hood. MLS’s Designated Player mechanism lets a club sign a handful of players whose actual pay has little relationship to what counts against the books, while a comparatively tiny salary budget governs everyone else. The result is a structural incentive to spend enormous money on one or two stars and comparatively little on the other 25 plus players filling out the roster. It’s a big reason mid table and rebuilding clubs have leaned so heavily on academy pipelines just to stay competitive, since there’s not much cap room left once a couple of DP contracts are on the books.

That structure, though, is now up for a rethink. According to reporting from The Athletic in recent weeks, MLS’s board of governors received a presentation this summer on a sweeping overhaul of the roster rules, one aimed at moving away from a system where clubs can only meaningfully invest in a small handful of players. One chief soccer officer, speaking anonymously as part of an Athletic survey, argued that Designated Player slots need to stick around in some form since a league can’t function without a way to sign the next Messi or Son Heung-min, but said he’d rather see a cap structure that lets clubs invest across the whole roster instead of funneling money into just a few names.

Separately, the league has also floated a more dramatic step: getting rid of General Allocation Money and Targeted Allocation Money entirely. That plan would push MLS toward a more conventional spending model by raising the salary cap floor, simplifying how rosters get built, and giving clubs more freedom in how they allocate their money. Instead of the current maze of allocation mechanisms, money that can be spent, traded, converted, or stacked in increasingly complicated ways, clubs would work within a simpler, more traditional cap system.

The timing isn’t a coincidence either. MLS is already set to flip its calendar to a fall to spring format beginning in 2027, and league officials reportedly see the roster rule overhaul as another piece of that broader transformation. There’s also a succession issue sitting in the background. With Lionel Messi now in his late 30s, MLS is quietly preparing for a post Messi world, and a more evenly distributed spending model is seen as one way to keep the league compelling even after its biggest draw eventually walks away.

None of this happens overnight, of course. Any changes to the roster rules will have to be negotiated into a new collective bargaining agreement with the MLS Players Association, and the current deal doesn’t expire until January 2028, which is a tight window if the league wants everything finalized before the 2027 calendar switch. Smaller market clubs that have relied on allocation money as a kind of competitive equalizer will also need some convincing, since raising the salary floor raises the cost of doing business for every ownership group, not just the big spenders.

Still, the direction of travel seems fairly clear. If MLS actually follows through, the days of a club dumping most of its available spending into two or three aging stars, while filling out the rest of the roster with homegrown players and bargain bin veterans, could give way to something closer to what fans see in Europe’s top leagues: cap space spread more evenly across a squad, with teams able to invest in depth as well as star power.

Until then, expect more of what we’ve already seen this year. Lewandowski, Griezmann, and Casemiro aren’t arriving because MLS has abandoned its old habits. They’re arriving because the current system still rewards exactly that kind of splashy, top heavy spending. The proposed overhaul probably won’t stop clubs from chasing global superstars, and most executives seem to agree that’s a feature of the league’s growth rather than a bug, but it could finally let them build a complete roster around those stars instead of leaning on them to carry the whole show.