Arriola to Seattle Sounders, Silano to Liga F, and more: Tuesday Freedom Kicks
Happy Tuesday, everyone! I’ve got just a few news items for you all today (plus a new Hey Spirits episode that I’ll be posting later). Let’s take a look.
Sounders complete trade for Paul Arriola, sources say (Sounder at Heart)
” He was apparently willing to take a pay cut to come to the Sounders in large part because he’s never played for a team that was a real title contender.” Ouch.
Croix Bethune went on Sam Mewis’s Friendlies to talk about her incredible 2024:
Lena Silano, reinforcement for the Costa Adeje Tenerife Egatesa forward line (UD Tenerife)
Departing Spirit player Lena Silano has found a new home at UD Tenerife in Spain’s Liga F. I think this could be a good move for her. She needed a club where she could get more minutes, and she’ll be playing against some of the best in the world.
Morgan: Greatest career achievement was equal pay, not World Cups or Olympics (Pro Soccer Wire)
This is a great attitude, but also just imagine having so many achievements of this caliber to choose among.
FIFA has temporarily banned the Union from registering new players (The Philadelphia Inquirer $)
Philadelphia Union should be able to resolve this dispute over $700 owed to a youth club, but who knows, with FIFA!
Chemistry 101 (American Soccer Analysis)
An attempt to determine how much familiarity among players affects performance, with graphs!
The Revs signed Wyatt Omsberg as a free agent. He made $217,000 last year. That would have been a pretty nice piece to shore up the central defense for United.
Goff has a new piece out about the Leal signing, and gives us a shot of the state of the roster.
With Leal, there are 23 players on the squad (this doesn’t count Kristian Fletcher, who’s on loan). He notes that Kye Rowles is imminent to join, and that Mackay has said he’ll be signing “one more player soon.” That brings the total number to 25, which is still not a huge number. Especially since Hakim Karamoko seems like a prime candidate to go on loan (ditto if they sign someone like Graham Jones as a homegrown).
I’m hoping that “one more player” is the fourth U-22 signing, but we still need some depth at central midfield, center back, and the outside backs. I wouldn’t mind another center forward, but we’ll probably roll with Benteke, Badji, Murrell, and Karamoko.
I know more players will come in the summer, but… do you need to wait until then?
Yeah, the thought of saying “roster done for this window!” at this point would make me very concerned.
I’m with you on worrying about waiting for the summer…the guys we got this past summer might be all-stars, but it was wayyyyy too late for them to save our season by the time they were integrated into the team. It does seem like we’ll be going into the season thin at those areas you mentioned. Getting through the season without paying the price for lack of depth (or quality) will require some luck.
One thing I’m somewhat critical of Lesesne about is: he seems very comfortable at not filling the roster spots–a philosophy of better to be shorthanded but everyone you have is a fit, vs. extra tools in the toolbox even if they aren’t really a great match for what you do. Then again, maybe it’s not Lesesne, maybe it’s the ownership just being tight with the purse strings.
Think it’s the latter
I think it’s a bit of both. Last year we were hard up against the cap because of bad salaries and borrowing from that year’s allocation money by the previous regime (at least one of whom is still employed by the club, ahem). But, Lesesne desperately needed a left back for much of the year, and there were games when a healthy Mohanad Jeahze was available, but Lesesne wouldn’t use him, or sometimes left him off the roster entirely. He seemed pretty content to do the same with Martin Rodgriguez too, until Rodriguez started impressing Lesesne in practice.
Jeahze must have done something bad to get iced out so completely so quickly. Or he asked to be sold and the management didn’t want to risk messing up a clean exit. We’ve had too many of these weird situations in the last couple of seasons, we’re never going to be serious contenders if we’ve got dead weight on an already short roster every year.
The Jeahze thing smelled really weird and toxic really quickly, it felt like something was up.
I worry about Peglow. Weird that he crapped out in Portugal and wound up in Poland. But we’ll see.
Regarding Arriola (I think well of him), DCU was a contender when Rooney first came. There was no team that much better than us at that moment. I hope he enjoys the Sounders.
Goff just casually dropped a bomb that teams can now buy out two contracts a year, including DPs. We can buy out Klich now! Bringing in another DP and another U-22, things are looking rosier!
*assuming we actually take advantage of this.
It makes no sense whatsoever not to buy him out.
It makes no competitive sense. It means that the owners have to spend ~$1.8 million additional, as well as the extra $2 million in GAM they’re spending* with the 2 DP/4 U22 set up.
I’d imagine that they wait on this until summer anyway, just to lower the cost of the buyout, even though it’s all sunk at this point anyway.
Well, I’ve been repeatedly arguing that they could buy DOWN Klich’s contract with GAM, but that it might make sense to wait until summer because it would take less GAM — also there should be many more options in the summer.
That said, if they can now buy down the contract, there’s less reason to wait. Still, it might be hard to find a 2nd DP now, is that would be a reason to wait. Also, the cheapos running this club might still prefer to use Garber’s money to erase (part) of their debt to Klichy.
Still, the timing of this revelation makes me think it’s specifically aimed to benefit DCU — though maybe Miami has something in mind
Goff just posted that it can NOT be used on Klich. He was already traded. Nashville can use it because Leal was waived (and Nashville was on the hook for his salary) while Klich was no longer a DCU Player but still in the league. I know, nit-picky. I think this was not done with DCU in mind but instead, Miami with Neymar.
Why would this trustworthy league create any rule to put Neymar in Miami, and not go retrospective in the context of preseason to help other teams, especially DCU, out?
It is so inconsistent with Darth Garber……..
To quote one of my favorite TV shows, “God, please stop screwing me for one second, and let this happen”
Apparently you can also switch your roster-building mechanism midseason now. So, if we don’t fill that U-22 slot until summer (which I still think is a mistake), we could theoretically just go out and get two DPs in the summer window. I have no idea if we would have to also shed whatever amount of the $2 million extra GAM we used.
(I generally don’t mind all the overly intricate rules and Calvinball nature of implementation, but we might be reaching my threshold here. Time to just give every team a pot of money and say go ahead and build the roster how you want.)
*cough* Neymar and Miami *cough*
EXACTLY! We have a winner! And Don Pardo, tell our listening audience what Will Nelson has won….
I too congratulate Will, for beating me to the punch regarding Darth Garber’s uncanny ability to secure Miami’s destiny……
The great irony here is that Miami doesn’t really need much help in attacking. I don’t even think they need another star attraction. Can they sell still more tickets? They do need defense though.
I suppose they might need some security given that Messi may not be up to a full season, plus all the other games. Maybe having Neymar would be a nice bit of protection.
There’s some reason to keep that flexibility for now. This is a VERY experimental roster, with really unknown qualities like Peglow and Kijima. even players like Schnegg and Enow have not had much chance to show what they can do. Then, there’s homegrowns. Hopkins and Ku-Dipietro, who will probably get more of a chance to show what they can do. Peltola and Pirani have been underwhelming. Peltola, is signed thru 2027 (option for 2025), but Pirani is only guaranteed thru 2025 (options for ’26 and ’27).
The biggest unknown will be Leal. He’s got a big contract for next year, but nto guaranteed. DCU could [ick up his option, or could check his return over the first 5 months, and decide they don’t want him either as a DP, or a big GAM buy down in 2026. So, they may want to use the summer to find someone more effective or more reliable. Right now the team doesn’t need a winger, but if Peglow or Leal fall flat, they will need a real quality winger. I get the instinct to wait for the summer there.
That said, the roster lacks depth. We don’t have any depth at D-Mid — and we only have 4 CBs — not enough given injuries, needing more than just one back-up at each position) and not enough depth in case they decide to play a back 3. I think they need to bring in at least another DM and a CB, so they don’t find themselves trying to patch together a healthy starting lineup, while waiting for the summer window.
I’d imagine there are some veteran free agents available at DM or CB who wouldn’t break the bank or be worse than a scarecrow.
Yeah, like I mentioned at the top, Wyatt Omsberg would have been a really capable 4th/5th CB and didn’t cost very much. There’s likely to be somebody like that available. Chris McVey was gotten last year on extremely short notice and if we did quite well.
Because it’s still preseason, and all things are still possible, let’s say the team bought out Klich and opened up a second DP slot. Then they used their cash money to buy an MLS player. Who would you rather get, Evander or Lucho?
I don’t think Cincy is giving up Lucho, and I don’t know if he’d want to come back given the way he acted in his last season here after PSG fell through.
Time and money smooth over the cracks pretty well. That said, I don’t think we’re going to jump for him. I think I agree with Talonesque that a productive winger would elevate our team more. Benteke rules the middle of the offensive third, let someone else cause trouble on either side.
Outside of Benteke himself, the wing figures to be our strength. Leal, Peglow, Kijima, Stroud, and Karamoko. We need someone who can drive the attack centrally. Is that Pirani? Could Peglow (random Brazilian) slot centrally?
Right now, I think that Enow of Peltola is our CDM, Kijima or Hopkins is our CM, and Leal and Peglow will kind of switch around between the left wing and CAM. Stroud is our right wing guy.
I’d rather have a great winger for DP.
After reading Goff’s piece (before Leal acquisition) I thought DCU was going young and cheap. I was pretty pessimistic about the season.
Now there seems to be some avenues of redemption. One is to buyout Klich perhaps later in the year and get the possibility of acquiring a DP. There are others as well. We will see how it goes?
Goff has just splashed cold water on all that, saying that per MLS, a team can’t use a buyout on a player they’ve traded, even if some of their salary remains on that team’s books. Nashville could buy out Leal because of the waiver, apparently.
Good grief.
Yikes. Guess we have to eat our moldy porridge. MLS rules continue being more complicated than Magic.
That is a massive bummer, but at least he killed that hope quickly
Although, gotta ask, where was this rule written and when was it instituted? We joke about Garber being after us, but it’s definitely the situation that Miami and other “mega” franchises would have gotten away with this.
Darth Garber is pleased…..
His reach is vast……
Goff has been saying on Bluesky that this second buyout and the other rules changes have been in the works for awhile and that everyone would have been aware of them. He also says he doubts that ownership would have spent their own money on a second buyout anyway.
It makes this whole thing so much more infuriating. We’re paying a Designated Player to play for a conference opponent. Really hard to see us making the playoffs this year, and it’s worse to have such blatant demonstrations that the ownership doesn’t care about getting the most competitive team possible on the field. All of the lip service to “youth” already seemed like a cop out in this regard, especially when there’s no MLS Next PRO team and we haven’t signed a homegrown player since Matai Akinmboni, but now it really seems like it’s deliberate.
I was hoping to go back to see a game in person for the first time since 2022, but it’s hard to want to spend my own money on this project.
Yeah, it’s incredibly dispiriting
Aaaargh! At least center back is now in the fold.
Apparently, Akinmboni made the bench against Chelsea for Bournemouth. That’s a crazy fast elevation, even if he was unlikely to see the field.
Its for seasoning in the clubhouse, methinks.
Undoubtedly, but at the same time, a substitute spot for that still has value, and that he even merits that place this soon is impressive, at least to me
In EPL is impressive, for sure
John Tolkin has been transferred abroad for $3 million. That number for someone with a lot more MLS experience and some senior national team appearances makes the Matai Akinmboni transfer fee look much more competitive.
Maybe the market overall is experiencing a bit of a correction
The Aussie centerback is signed. He awaits, drum roll, a work visa…..