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Why Inter Miami is under investigation after signing Casemiro

Sports Illustrated · Jul 22, 2026 18:30 · 3 min read

Why Inter Miami Is ‘Under Investigation’ After Signing Casemiro

Inter Miami have added a new star man, but could be back in hot water with the MLS roster building process.

Inter Miami signed Casemiro as the team’s latest superstar on Wednesday, but the deal is not without complications.

According to The Athletic, the club is under investigation by Major League Soccer for violating tampering rules in the process of signing the player.

The former Real Madrid and Manchester United star, who recently played in his third World Cup, signed with the south Florida side for the remainder of the 2026 season and the 2027 14-game MLS Sprint Season, with an option to extend until June 2029.

However, Casemiro was on LA Galaxy’s Discovery List, not Inter Miami’s. While the two sides reached a deal for Casemiro’s Discovery Rights, the situation is now under league investigation for potential tampering, as Miami allegedly negotiated with the player before acquiring his rights.

“Major League Soccer is reviewing a tampering allegation against Inter Miami CF,” the MLS statement to The Athletic read. “The league is gathering all relevant information and will refrain from further comment until the review is complete. While Inter Miami CF and the LA Galaxy have reached a settlement for the Discovery Priority to sign Casemiro, the terms will be released upon conclusion of the tampering investigation.”

The Discovery Priority process is meant to limit bidding wars between MLS teams for star players. In the orderly process, teams are supposed to acquire a player's rights before making contact, which may not have been the case in the long-rumored Casemiro-to-Miami deal.

While an agreement was reached to allow Casemiro to sign with the Herons, no determination was made on what the Galaxy would acquire.

In recent similar scenarios, the Vancouver Whitecaps paid up to $400,000 in General Allocation Money to FC Cincinnati for Discovery Rights to Thomas Müller in order to proceed in negotiations with the player in 2025, while the Galaxy acquired Marco Reus’s Discovery Rights in 2024 for a similar fee from Charlotte FC.

Every team in MLS can have up to five players on a Discovery List at a time, and those players must not be under contract with MLS or available through any other player acquisition process, such as the MLS SuperDraft. While those lists are not public, they can be changed at any time.

Miami Clashes With Regulations Again

Inter Miami are no strangers to clashing with MLS’s salary regulations, as the club’s ambitious vision pushes the limits of the salary cap system’s detailed process.

In 2021, well before the Lionel Messi era began in 2023, the club skirted in the reporting of Blaise Matuidi’s total salary, saying that the 2018 World Cup winner was below the Designated Player salary threshold, while paying him millions of outstanding salary on the side.

Before that, the league found that Andrés Reyes should have been a DP as well, and further investigation led MLS to discover the underreporting of several other players on the roster, including Leandro González Pírez, Nicolás Figal and Julián Carranza.

In a weird twist to get around some of the regulations, Matuidi—who had lifted the World Cup trophy less than three years prior—suited up with Inter Miami’s reserve team, then competing in the USL League One, the third division of U.S. soccer.

At that point, MLS levied a one-year suspension of then-chief operating officer and sporting director Paul McDonaugh and the club was fined $2 million. At the same time, managing owner Jorge Mas was hit with a $250,000 punishment. In 2022 and 2023 combined, the club was given a penalty of over $2.27 million in allocation money, which took a significant hit to the roster build and resulted in the team finishing near the bottom of the table in both campaigns.

Unlike many European leagues, MLS does not traditionally deduct points as punishment, given that the league lacks relegation. Instead, it relies on suspensions, financial penalties, reductions to allocation money and roster restrictions.