Morpheus: You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he expects to wake up. Ironically, that’s not far from the truth.
After talking with people about the Mehdi for Beckerman trade, I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of fans are waiting to be offered a choice between the red and blue pill. Last year, had you told me RSL would be trading away Mehdi Ballouchy, I would have told you to stop bogarting that joint. Mehdi’s immediate and obvious potential shone through as he was thrust into the starting line-up, and ultimately this year given the reigns of the RSL offense…such as it is. I’m still a little bitter about how little opportunity Mehdi was given to develop as a player in this league. RSL’s weak roster made the prospect of allowing Mehdi time to develop as a central midfielder a difficult option. Perhaps in retrospect this would’ve been the best possible pat for him though. Having failed to show or effectively develop an outside shot has severely limited his effectiveness in the middle. RSL’s wildly roaming midfield style has hampered their ability to maintain shape on a counter-attack, and ultimately put too much pressure on Mehdi to maintain posession in the middle of the park. Mehdi’s flamboyant style and flashing speed were substituded largely this year for safe and unproductive passes, primarily square or back, with little attempt to take players on in front of him. Far too often, he killed our offensive momentum by not pressing an attack with numbers, and our penchant for playing unpredictable balls long often made for a painful demise of a promising attack. Unfortunately, the difference in Mehdi’s play is due in large part to Kreis’ coaching and not having the luxury of a strong D-mid to back up his play. However, with Andy Williams gaining Kreis’ confidence and Mehdi’s poor performance in the middle this year, we were likely to see Mehdi relegated back outside in the near future.
The reality of this trade is that it is probably the right thing to do for both teams. For Colorado, having Pablo to play D-Mid makes Beckerman expendable, and Clavijo can gamble whether Mehdi would be effective in a more organized midfield. If Clavijo can get Mehdi to shoot and start forcing people to defend his dribbling again, the move is gold for him. For Mehdi’s sake, I hope he’s right. I think he’s been mired in a strange system for too long. I would like to see him improve as a player, and it certainly doesn’t seem like Kreis is able to bring out the best in him. For Real, we acquire a hard-nosed, reasonably talented holding midfielder so that we can stop playing holding midfield merry-go-round and build around somebody rather than constantly choose the lesser of formational evils. The move frees up Atiba to more effective use either on the flank or up top.
If nothing else, the recent trend to acquire 21-25 year old utility and defensive players is moving the age of our roster in the right direction. I’m actually reasonably hopeful about the possibility of seeing a back line of Wingert, Torres, Sturgis, and Pope. Putting Beckerman in front of that line at least represents a marked improvement on paper. Whether this will translate to on-field success or not remains to be seen.
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