Seattle Sounders head coach Sigi Schmid has explained the reasons for buying out the contract of midfielder Christian Tiffert.
On Saturday, the club decided to end their relationship with the 31-year old German who joined from Kaiserslautern as a Designated Player in July 2012 and Schmid said it was mainly to free up a DP spot as they look to bring in a quality forward.
"It's a situation of we're still looking to add a player up front, and with that situation - with cap reasons and everything else - we couldn't carry those amounts of DPs," he told the Seattle Times.
"We had to make a decision as to who we were going to carry and who we weren't. So that was the decision.
"I thought Christian did well for us. I thought it was just more a situation of where we were at cap-wise, and we really had to go from three DPs to two.
"I know Shalrie (Joseph) is a DP in name, but he's not a DP in terms of how he hits our cap (because Chivas USA pay part of his salary), and we really needed to go from three DPs to two.
"We decided we were going to keep Mauro (Rosales) and we decided that we needed to add a DP forward, so that takes care of your two DPs, so you have to make a decision."