SANDY, Utah – Like all of the clubs across the league, Real Salt Lake are faced with the prospect of losing a player in Wednesday's Expansion Draft.
The Montreal Impact are looking for the initial infusion of talent afforded to a new franchise, and RSL GM Garth Lagerwey is certain that his side will lose someone from itsroster.
“I will guarantee that we will lose a player,” Lagerwey told media earlier this month. “I think you see a staff in Montreal that sees soccer in a lot of the ways that we do, and are therefore going to evaluate players in the way that we will, and are therefore going to want one of our players.”
Lagerway also pointed to the fact that his playing days in Dallas with Impact head coach Jesse Marsch and director of soccer Matt Jordan gave him some insight into what type of player the Impact will be looking to acquire.
“I will tell you that Jesse Marsch and Matt Jordan are peers of all of ours personally on the staff,” Lagerwey said. “Matt played with Miles [Joseph], Jeff [Cassar], Jason [Kreis] and I in Dallas for multiple years.”
The draft allows each team to protect 11 players. In addition, players who are tagged as Generation adidas players or as Home Grown players are exempt from selection.
Real Salt Lake expect Luis Gil, who played a little less than1,300 minutes this season and is a Generation adidas player, to remain exempt. Under the GA program, players can be “graduated” if they exceed certain thresholds, but Lagerwey doesn’t believe that will be the case with the talented youngster.
GOAL: Gil scores his first MLS goal
“We don’t know this from the league yet for sure, but under the metrics they use to evaluate who graduates and who does not, usually they won’t graduate a player that young,” explained Lagerwey. “There’s a minute threshold that they have to hit, and it’s our understanding that he did not hit that threshold and therefore is not eligible to be graduated.”
As for the protected list, those must be submitted to the league on Monday, with the Expansion Draft to occur two days later. In between, the Impact will likely be looking to wheel and deal.
“Montreal takes the list, and then over the next two days calls everybody and says, 'What do you give me for so-and-so who is unprotected?'” Lagerwey said. "And then they work the best deal they can and then weigh that against the players they could just pick outright. And then they literally turn in a list with ten names to the league.”
Lagerway also believes Montreal’s picks could send ripples through the league, as clubs will have to adjust to losing talented players to the new Canadian outfit.
“You can do the math," he said. "There are 19 teams in the league. Ten guys will get chosen. Half the teams [roughly] will lose a guy, half won’t.”
