It's been a bit of a foregone conclusion for a few days now, but Orlando City has signed former AC Milan and Italy midfielder Antonio Nocerino. For those unfamiliar with the story, D.C. United had pursued Nocerino for some time when Orlando City came over the top with a bid after D.C. had made their own Designated Player offer to Nocerino, a violation of the discovery rights rule within Major League Soccer. As D.C. held the discovery rights to Nocerino, a fact that Orlando City neglected to vet with Major League Soccer - even the New York Red Bulls ceded so that D.C. could pursue the signing of Luciano Acosta - OCSC had to acquire the rights to sign the Italian from the Black-and-Red.
It's worth noting that OCSC was potentially facing their second tampering charge in eight months. The first came when Adrian Heath receiving a fine for discussing where Sporting Kansas City forward Dom Dwyer should be playing. In this case, they were either knowingly in the wrong or simply neglectful; in either case, Orlando was in a situation where the CBA-mandated $50,000 fee for discovery rights was not going to be enough to get the deal done.
While the exact amount Orlando is giving D.C. remains unspecified, we do know that it is a combination of general allocation money (GAM) and targeted allocation money (TAM) which is thought to be between $200,000-$250,000 total. If accurate, it would be almost the amount that the Chicago Fire received from the Montreal Impact so the Impact could sign Didier Drogba, and almost as much as the $250,000 in general allocation money that an MLS franchise earns in GAM for missing the playoffs each season, at least according to the Collective Bargaining Agreement that was recently posted on the MLS Players' Union website.
While OCSC gets a DP and will presumably use even more TAM to pay down another, D.C. gets to bank both types of allocation cash to use for a future signing, to offer to a team to move up in the allocation order if they choose (they are currently 13th in that particular mechanism), pay down an existing DP in Fabian Espindola, or pursue some other move. It remains to be seen if it is used before the start of D.C.'s regular season against the LA Galaxy or during MLS' summer window, but with D.C.'s first CONCACAF Champions League match five days away, it's safe to assume that if there is a move, it would not be in the extreme short-term.
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