Atlanta United and Minnesota United will have fewer picks in next week’s Expansion Draft than previous expansion teams, as the league announced in September that it has reduced the number of picks per team from the 10 that New York City FC and Orlando City SC received in 2014 to five for the 2017 newcomers.
While they’ll select fewer players, Atlanta and Minnesota received compensation for the reduced number of picks. MLS executive vice president of competition and player relations Todd Durbin (pictured above) told MLSsoccer.com in an interview on Wednesday that both clubs will receive additional General Allocation Money from the league to soften the blow of participating in a curtailed Expansion Draft.
Durbin declined to specify the amount of General Allocation Money that will be given to Atlanta and Minnesota as compensation for the abbreviated draft.
The MLS roster rules state that any team that has a player selected in the Expansion Draft is given a set amount of General Allocation Money money by the league as compensation. Durbin also declined to specify that amount.
“We did an analysis of the drafts over the past several years and what we found was once you got to a certain point in the expansion process, that the players that were drafted later and later, there was some question as to the impact they were actually making,” Durbin said. “Because of that, we asked ourselves was if there was a way that we can shorten the Expansion Draft which would provide less disruption toward the existing teams but at the same time ensure that the expansion teams have the ability to put a competitive team on the field.
“And ultimately what we did, was we concluded that the best outcome is to reduce the Expansion Draft from 20 players down to 10 players. The existing teams would lose fewer players, but the expansion teams also got an allocation amount in return. So while they are getting five fewer players, they will have allocation amounts to go out and try to make trades within the league or sign new players.”
A quick look at NYCFC and Orlando’s rosters shows the low hit rate of the Expansion Draft. Of the 20 players selected by New York and Orlando in the 2014 draft, only five were with the teams at the end of the 2016 season. Only two of those five – NYCFC’s Tommy McNamara and Jason Hernandez, who had his option declined by the club last month – could be called major contributors. Seven of the players selected were no longer in MLS at all at the end of the 2016 regular season.
Each of the 20 existing MLS teams will announce on Monday a list of 11 protected players that cannot be selected by Atlanta, who will pick first, or Minnesota. In addition to the protected players, Homegrown players that are on a club’s supplemental or reserve roster and players currently in the Generation adidas program are not eligible to be selected.
Each team can only lose a maximum of one player in the Expansion Draft. Once a player is selected from a club’s current roster, that club is removed from the Expansion Draft and cannot lose any more players.
Durbin also said that Atlanta and Minnesota will be able to pick MLS free agents in the Expansion Draft, though any free agent selected would still be able to sign wherever he wants. If Atlanta or Minnesota select a free agent on Tuesday, the free agency privileges of that player’s current club would transfer to the expansion team that selected the free agent.
That has a couple of implications. First, according to the MLS roster rules, free agents are eligible to re-sign with their current team for any salary. If they choose to join another team in MLS, the free agency rules agreed to in the 2015 collective bargaining agreement put a cap on how much of a raise they can receive. If Atlanta or Minnesota select a free agent, they could offer him a new contract at any salary. Every other team in the league, including the player’s previous club, would be subject to the rule capping the size of the raise they could give the free agent.
Second, as long as they’ve made the free agent an offer, Durbin said that clubs that see free agents leave to sign with another MLS team receive “a small amount of allocation from the league” as compensation. If Atlanta or Minnesota select a free agent and make him an offer but he signs with another MLS team, the expansion club in question would then receive that allocation money.
Durbin also acknowledged that the league discussed a plan to eliminate the Expansion Draft entirely last offseason. He said that idea wasn’t ever under serious consideration, however, and that he expects the league to hold a similar Expansion Draft next year ahead of LAFC’s 2018 entry into the league.
“Obviously you consider all the alternatives. What I will say is that it wasn’t ever under any serious consideration,” Durbin said. “We have contemplated if there would be an Expansion Draft and we’ll reevaluate for the next round of expansion, but I think it’d be reasonable to say that it’s our expectation that the expansion process for the next round of expansion will be similar to this one.”
Burrito’s exit creates Expansion Draft complications for RSL
Real Salt Lake’s offseason took an unexpected turn on Wednesday, when the club announced that they released Juan Manuel “Burrito” Martinez from his contract to allow the Designated Player to return to his native Argentina to be closer to family.
Martinez arrived at RSL in the summer of 2015, recording one goal and one assist in eight matches that season before tallying seven goals and three assists in 32 regular season appearances in 2016. He got off to a great start in 2016, but faded in the second half of the year, notching just one goal and one assist in his final 17 regular season matches with RSL.
His family never quite settled off the field, either, prompting Wednesday’s news that the 31-year-old asked out of his RSL contract – which had one year remaining – to return to Argentina with his wife and two young children. Martinez, who first approached RSL with the possibility that he’d look to return to Argentina because of personal reasons in August, will be free to sign with any club he chooses. RSL GM Craig Waibel told me on Thursday morning that the club expects him to land with a team in his home country.
“His wife, with young kids in a new country and everything, the adjustment just wasn’t taking,” Waibel said. “Shoot, he’s not the first person or first family to ever go through wanting to go home. So we talked about it, talked him blue in the face. I tried 30 different ways to get creative to find a way to make it work, but at the end of the season we sat down again and I think it was just time for him and his family to go home.
“In the end, like I’ve said time and time before, there’s a humanity side to this job that gets lost quite often. And every once in a while, like in this situation, it comes back and you do the right thing for the person.”
Martinez is the second high-profile attacking player to depart RSL this offseason, following Javier Morales’ exit from the club last month.
This one has a bit of an added wrinkle, however: With Martinez out, RSL will have to include one player on their 11-man protected list for next week’s Expansion Draft that will not be back with the team next year.
League rules mandate that all clubs include at least three international players on their protected lists for the Expansion Draft. With Martinez’s departure, RSL only have two players under contract for next year – Sunday Stephen and Demar Phillips – who count as internationals. The other non-US-citizens on RSL’s roster either have green cards and don’t count as international players or, like Generation adidas player Omar Holness, are exempt from the Expansion Draft.
RSL will protect Stephen and Phillips and be forced to either protect Martinez or another international player that they have no intention of bringing back in 2017. Which player ends up being protected is somewhat immaterial, as whoever it is will not be back with the club next year. That creates a situation in which RSL will be forced to leave a player they'd like to retain off their protected list in order to protect an international player they know won't be back.
“We now find ourselves in a situation where, because we’re very active in the green-card process, we only have two players currently on our roster that qualify as foreign,” Waibel said. “And that’s of course early in the offseason, that’s not how we’re going to go into next season. But the way the rule is written, and of course I’d like to see this changed, but the way the rule is written, is that it’s based off of your 2016 roster, not based off of what you’re doing moving forward.
“So I’d like to see them revisit this, because I think the stages of this process are in the wrong order whereby we’ve already made decisions that impact the standing of the amount of foreign players we have on our roster. Many of our foreign players have green cards like I said, but we’re now going to be in a situation with the league rules the way they’re written currently, we’re going to end up protecting a player that we have no intention of having on our roster next year.”
Hedges re-signs in Dallas, waits for USMNT shot
FC Dallas locked up the 2016 MLS Defender of the Year on Tuesday, signing captain Matt Hedges to a new, four-year contract that will keep him in Texas through the 2020 season.
Hedges, who had a year left on his previous deal, won’t count as a Designated Player for Dallas. A league source said that the club didn’t use any Targeted Allocation Money on the two-time Best XI selection.
That means he’ll clock in at a lower salary in 2017 than 25-year-old D.C. defender Steve Birnbaum, who signed a new deal with D.C. last week. United announced that they used TAM to sign Birnbaum, which means he’ll be paid over the DP threshold of $457,500 but won’t be classified as a DP.
That will change in the final three years of the contract, when Hedges' back-loaded deal pushes him above the DP threshold, forcing FC Dallas to either use TAM to pay down his cap hit or classify the central defender as a DP.
Re-signing Hedges is huge for FCD, who are markedly better when the 6-foot-4 center back is in the lineup. Dallas went 13-4-9, recorded 11 of their 12 shutouts and allowed just 23 goals in Hedges’ 26 regular season starts this year, good for a 0.88 goals against average. Their numbers were starkly different when Hedges was out, with the US Open Cup and Supporters’ Shield winners posting a 4-4-0 mark and conceding 17 goals – 2.13 per game – in the eight regular season contests he missed.
“It wasn’t too difficult,” Hedges told me on Wednesday when asked about the negotiations. “They kind of brought it up towards the middle or the end of the season that they wanted to do this, but they wanted to wait until after the season was over.
“I think it’s a great deal for me. I like being in Dallas, I like the culture here, I like what’s being built and I want to continue to be a part of it.”
Hedges also spoke about his international career, saying that he’s hopeful that new US national team manager Bruce Arena will give him more of a look than he received under Jurgen Klinsmann. Hedges was named to just one USMNT roster during Klinsmann’s tenure, receiving a late call to the 2015 January camp before making his first – and, so far, only – international appearance in a friendly against Panama that Februrary.
“[I haven’t heard from him yet], but I think I’ll get another chance under Bruce,” he said. “That’s the way I feel and kind of the vibe I’m getting, but I think I’ll definitely get another shot at it.”
