Fortune favors the bold…hopefully it will favor the decisive. Nik Besagno and Andy Williams are now the only remaining players held over from the “Ellinger Era.” No teams chose to pick up each others’ discards, according to all reported sources, in the MLS waiver draft this year. RSL had 5 players eligible; Brown, Curfman, Jimenez, Kipre, and Stewart. Watson is currently playing with the FC Dallas team in T&T, and is courting a trade, which RSL has reportedly offered to facilitate. Releasing young players who have shown a spark of quality makes a strong statement…Kreis and Lagerway are both on record saying that they want more quality on their reserve squad to push the senior side, and Kreis is saying that these guys are either not talented enough to push the 1st team or that they don’t fit into his system. Placing 6 players on waivers is an interesting choice for RSL given that it means that they intend to acquire at least 8 players either through trades, discovery players or through the draft for the upcoming season. Kreis is in Argentina watching a 60 player combine right now, which might shed some light on what he plans to do with the 4 extra international slots RSL has available this year. The league has decided to change the internation player rules. A team can now have 8 foreign players with no distinction between youth and senior. After releasing Kipre, RSL is only carrying Morales, Mantilla, Espindola, and Harris (Yura and Eskandarian are both listed as internationals on the RSL roster, but Esky, should he renegotiate his contract, is a US citizen and his international status is a mistaken carry-over from his transfer to Toronto, and if I’m not mistaken, Yura’s asylum status with the State department makes him a citizen). Who they have waived seems significant in that They have waived 3 defenders, which means they should be looking to pick up some defensive help in the off-season. Specifically, they need a starting right back. They also need either a solid center back and/or a defensive midfielder. My guess is that they’ll be looking to pick up a midfielder and a striker in the draft.
On a side note, I’m a little surprised at the dearth of news coming out of mls and RSL specifically. Of course, then I haven’t exactly been blogging myself to death either. Here’s hoping Kreis asked Santa for a quality D-Mid.
-Heretic
Trivial fact of the day:
The average age of the team is now 24. Ritchie Kotschau is now our oldest player at 32.
December 1, 2007
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