TO Neymar jr. he would like to play again with his former teammates Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, thus reuniting the MSN that was lethal in his time at Barcelona: “Obviously, playing with Messi and Suarez again would be incredible,” he told CNN on Tuesday. Currently under contract with Al Hilal until the summer of 2025, the Brazilian could be free in June and could therefore reach Florida.
The idea, however, should remain as such, as Javier Mascherano also admitted in the conference. The biggest obstacle is the MLS rules: “We can’t talk about Neymar because there is nothing. You know the MLS rules on the salary cap. So for us right now it’s impossible to try to think about him.”
In Major League Soccer, players’ salaries are limited by a “salary cap” granted by the league to the franchises, which prevents them from awarding too many excessively high salaries, with the exception of some “designated” players (the star players of the various teams), who instead they can benefit from a salary similar to that of European stars. But if a portion of this salary counts towards the salary cap, the rest must be paid by the club owner.
Some time ago David Beckham had raised the issue and Inter Miami has been pressing the MLS for some time to remove this limit: “The reality is that if the MLS has this problem it is because the rules are rigid and cannot be broken, unless MLS does not decide to change them.”