Kevin De Bruyne could team up with Lionel Messi in MLS.Photograph: Conor Molloy/ProSports/REX/Shutterstock
If Kevin De Bruyne decides to come to Major League Soccer for his next professional stop, the destination could very well be with Lionel Messi at Inter Miami.
The Athletic and ESPN each reported on Monday that the south Florida club have acquired the Belgian star’s discovery rights, giving them the right of first refusal to negotiate a contract with De Bruyne should he decide to move to the league after he leaves Manchester City. Inter Miami declined to comment on the reports.
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The MLS discovery process allows each MLS team to name up to five players that they have the initial right to negotiate with for potential signings. De Bruyne’s discovery rights were initially held by expansion side San Diego FC, but the club removed him from their list earlier this year, according to GiveMeSport, after determining that the player did not fit their plans.
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The remaining hurdle for any move, aside from the player’s wish to do so, is salary. De Bruyne reportedly earns around £20m ($25.5m) per year at Man City, a figure that would likely make him comfortably the highest-paid player in MLS, ahead of Messi’s $20m deal.
Even if De Bruyne takes a large pay cut, MLS roster rules limit Miami’s flexibility somewhat. Currently, the maximum annual salary per player allowed under MLS rules is just over $740,000, but there are multiple ways players can be paid more, sometimes significantly so.
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The most famous of these is the designated player (DP) rule. Each MLS team is allowed to sign up to three designated players, each of which can be paid any amount by the club while only counting against the club’s cap at the maximum salary (Messi, for example, only hits Miami’s cap at that $740,000 figure, with the club itself paying out the difference). De Bruyne’s wage demands would surely pass the DP threshhold, but Miami are presently using their three DP spots on Messi, Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets. That probably closes the door to De Bruyne signing as a DP this summer, but it’s important to note that all three of Miami’s current DPs are on contracts that end after the 2025 season.
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A more likely route would be to add De Bruyne this summer using mechanisms known as targeted allocation money and general allocation money (TAM and GAM). While the uses for each vary somewhat, both mechanisms essentially give teams extra space on their salary budget by allowing them to “buy down” a player’s cap hit. Miami could use GAM and/or TAM to reduce De Bruyne’s salary hit to below the maximum budget charge, but it’s unknown exactly how much they’ll have to work with. The club is now listed as having about $3.1 in GAM available. Their current TAM holdings are unknown, but each MLS team was given $2.2m in TAM at the start of 2025 and Inter Miami currently lists six players (including Luis Suárez) whose budget charges have been bought down using the mechanism, so it’s unlikely to be much.
Still, there is some precedent for star players joining MLS teams in the summer on non-DP deals, only to be made DPs later on. Zlatan Ibrahimović is perhaps the most famous of these, with the Swedish striker joining LA Galaxy on a TAM deal midway through the 2018 season, only to be then handed a new DP-level contract before the 2019 campaign. Inter Miami’s Jordi Alba, too, joined the club on a TAM-level one and a half-year deal in the same 2023 summer window as Messi. That deal was later extended and, in the process, made Alba a DP.
