@Jogo Bonito There are no dumb questions.
@Hootieleece said a lot already I might add couple of things
Supporters Shield
It combines the Western and Eastern table. Its another title, but it still got some value.
It decides the Superdraft order. For e.g. Minnesota would get the 1st Draft pick.
And the winner gets 1 from 4 Champions League places.
Squad / Wage Cap / Foreing Players
Squad Size is always 30. Every player not registered are getting waived/released.
If you got a 2nd team and can keep more players by dropped them to the 2nd team.
There is an overall wage cap. This season it was 4,95 mio.
This doenst mean your wage bill is 4,95 mio. There are a lot of contract types, which either dont count to the cap or will count with a specific value.
For e.g.
Designed Player with always count 618k to the wage cap
Reserve or Generation Adidas will never count to the wage cap.
Senior Minimum Salary (SMS) Contract are worth 84,5k, can either count or dont count to the wage cap.
With the monopoly money "General Allocation Money" or "Target Allocation Money" you can buy down the cap impact.
If you are able this money the right way, you basicly complete the MLS class.
Every MLS team got a specific number of "international slots"
Those slots are also assets. You can trade them away for 1-5 years or even permanent.
At the moment we got 8 permanent slots, this means we can only register 8 non-Americans.
Canadian teams got it a little bit easier.
Canadian players wont count as foreign for them, for American teams they count.
If someone really want to learn the MLS, I always recomment to start with Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver.
Your player pool is much bigger.
"Do MLS matches still get scheduled during International Breaks? That killed my team when I managed there. Do players under a certain age become eligible for those games or only if they're registered for the senior squad?"
Sometimes yes.
I think you can all up players from the 2nd team for match day, but I never had the need to do it.