We saw a number of firsts in MLS this season, from the first game involving the Philadelphia Union to the first championship for the Colorado Rapids.
This week brings another, as the league stages its inaugural Re-Entry Draft, a new player dispersal device created by the collective bargaining agreement established last March.
The Re-Entry Draft will take place in two phases, the first one kicking off on Wednesday, and Phase 2 happening on Dec 15. Teams will draft in reverse order of 2010 finish, including playoff performance.
[inlinenode:320696]As with last week’s Expansion Draft, there are a number of accomplished players available, including:
- The top two career scorers in MLS history (Jaime Moreno, Jeff Cunningham)
- Nine former US internationals (Jimmy Conrad, Cunningham, Nick Garcia, Cory Gibbs, Frankie Hejduk, Jovan Kirovski, Richard Mulrooney, Carey Talley and Josh Wolff)
- Two South Americans with three-part names who’ve dominated MLS in recent seasons (Juan Pablo Angel, Guillermo Barros Schelotto)
- 19 players with international experience (the nine Yanks mentioned above, plus two Argentines, one Bermudan (!), one Bolivian, two Canadians, one Colombian, one Jamaican and one New Zealander)
The league is entering uncharted territory with this event, so no one is certain how it will play out, but early indications suggest that most of the action, especially in the first stage, is likely to revolve around mid-tier players.
Many of the players available in Stage 1 are in the option year of their contract, and anyone drafting them will have to pick up their option (and their new salary). If a player’s current club declined to pick up the option, it’s unlikely that others will step in.
Of course you never know. But it’s more likely that things will heat up in Stage 2, when teams will draft for the right to negotiate with players.
Hot Stove
Stage 1 of the Re-Entry draft may be a cagey affair, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of other player transactions in the works.
Red Bull New York announced that they’ve all but finalized January transfer deals with Norwegian midfielder Jan Gunnar Solli and English striker Luke Rodgers.
[inlinenode:319784]Solli, 29, has 40 caps for Norway, and spent the past four seasons with SK Brann. Rodgers, 28, has been with Notts County (where RBNY’s Hans Backe had a brief stint as manager) since 2009.
New York also suggested they might sign University of Maryland midfielder Matt Kassel (right), a Red Bull academy product, as a Home Grown player in advance of January’s SuperDraft.
In New England, the Revs made an offer to out-of-contract veteran keeper Matt Reis while declining the options on four other players, including former US national team defender Cory Gibbs.
Colorado technical director Paul Bravo, who fielded offers for red-hot striker Omar Cummings during the summer, announced last week that the Jamaican international was not for sale and would remain with the Rapids in 2011.
[inline_node:322313]At least one of the bids to pull Cummings out of MLS came from South of the Border (Necaxa, to be exact), where another international, US midfielder José Francisco Torres (right), is reportedly pondering a move to MLS.
The 23-year-old Longview, Texas, native has received permission to leave Pachuca if he gets an offer. There’s a team in the Lone Star State that lost two US international midfielders last offseason—that’d be Houston, which said goodbye to Stuart Holden and Ricardo Clark. Maybe they’re in the market to add one this year.
All Day I Dream About … Spain
One of Clark’s and Holden’s former teammates in Houston, winger Danny Cruz, is currently on tour in Spain with MLS’ Generation adidas players.
The group, which consists of 15 players currently in the GA program along with four recent graduates, opened the tour last Thursday with an impressive 2-1 win over Real Madrid’s reserve team. Sporting Kansas City striker Teal Bunbury and Columbus midfielder Dilly Duka scored the goals.
Starting up top for the MLS side on Thursday were Bunbury and Juan Agudelo—the same duo that played the second half of the US national team’s recent 1-0 win over South Africa, with the teenager Agudelo bagging the winning goal.
The side plays Rayo Vallecano’s reserves on Tuesday, and wraps up the trip with a match against the Atlético Madrid reserves on Wednesday.
Ready-Made Rivalry
Vancouver Whitecaps FC opened their first minicamp as an MLS side over the weekend, incorporating new players such as Jonathan Leathers and Shea Salinas into the team and pointing toward the day next spring when they’ll first kick a ball in anger in MLS.
When that happens, Vancouver will join Portland and Seattle in a kind of rivalry transplant that we’re pretty sure has never happened before.
[inline_node:323599]The Whitecaps, Timbers and Sounders have been competing for the Cascadia Cup since 2004, but the three clubs have heated rivalries with one another that go back much further than that—all the way back to their days in the NASL.
The three cities are steeped in US soccer history. Here’s just one slice: Seattle played the Cosmos in the 1977 NASL championship game—which was also happened to be the legendary Pelé’s last competitive match—and it took place at Portland’s Civic Stadium, now known as PGE Park, the Timbers’ MLS stadium for 2011. (The Whitecaps won the NASL two years later, and drew roughly 100,000 fans to their downtown victory parade.)
When that league folded in 1984, the three franchises carried on their grudge matches, pretty much uninterrupted, in the A-League, the USL and the US Open Cup. (Seattle and Portland met in a heated third-round match in 2009).
Now, they’re ready to take it to the next level.
The new Pacific Northwest teams already have supporters’ bases sure to rival the outstanding Seattle fans—which means we can look forward to at least two more stadiums with roaring atmosphere for every game in the 2011 MLS season.
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