More Information on the Expansion Draft

MLS has released a little more news about how the expansion draft is going to work late next month.

We already knew the basics, that MLS teams would be able to protect only 11 players, that Generation Adidas and homegrown players will be exempt from selection and therefore don't need to be protected.  Here are a couple more rules that will be important for how clubs select their 11 protected players.

-If club has a player selected, it can move one more player to the protected list.

-DPs can be left unprotected in the expansion draft, unless he has a no-trade clause in his contract. In that case, he must be protected.

-If a player has a contract option, the team can protect him without exercising the option.

-If Portland or Vancouver selects a developmental player, they must offer him a senior roster slot.

So there we go, a little more information about the process we'll be very familiar with in four weeks time.

Timbers Add Four Players

Today, Portland Timbers announced the first four players set to join their MLS club next season. Three of them are current Timbers, two have prior MLS experience, and one was in Manchester United's youth system.

Steve Cronin (GK)
-27 years old
-Part of the U-17 academy in Bradenton
-2009 first team USL performer
-55 goals allowed in 2655 MLS minutes isn't the best stat ever (about 1.86 goals per game) but you have to remember that he was the unfortunate soul stuck with LA's 2008 defense in front of him.
-Would be a servicable starter or a great backup.

Ryan Pore (M/F)
-27 years old
-16th pick in the 2005 MLS SuperDraft
-61 appearance with Kansas City Wizards, 17 starts, 1842 minutes, 3 goals, 2 assists
-2009 first team USL performer
-2010 USL golden boot winner (15 goals in 29 starts)
-Plays more of an attacking mid role, but could be a poor man's Le Toux (aka a little better than the Seattle version of Le Toux)

Bright Dike (F)
-23 years old
-12th pick in 2010 MLS SuperDraft, but not signed after camp with Columbus Crew
-10 goals in 23 games this year as a rookie out of Notre Dame
-You don't get drafted 12th without talent. He may not have shown it immediately for the Crew (or they may have just missed on him) but he seems to have found a scoring touch in his first professional season.

Eddie Johnson (F) - no, not that one
-26 years old
-Born in Chester, England and spent ages 15-18 in Man U's youth system
-Came to USL to join former coach at Coventry City after his club Chester City fell into financial trouble.
-14 goals in 26 games this season for Austin Aztex
-This would be an exciting signing to me if I was a Timbers fan. Sure, he couldn't hack it in Europe, but a lot of guys like him have come to MLS and contributed mightily. He's still young and clearly has talent.

JPA 2 NYRB: ttyl

Caught up in the boringness of last nights US/Colombia match was Juan Pablo Angel's announcement at half time that he "probably won't" return to the New York Red Bulls next season.

This isn't entirely surprising. He and Thierry Henry play very similarly as strikers and with nearly $11m tied up in Designated Player salaries already with Rafa Marquez and Henry New York isn't likely to put $500k+ into another striker. So that leaves us with the question: where does Angel go?

He's said his family feels at home in America, so he may stay around with another MLS team. Also, he obviously still has the skill to contribute a lot to any MLS team, and will deserve DP money for at least a couple more seasons.

Some possible targets:
New England Revolution: There have been a couple articles lately that New England is finally ready to open up and pay for a DP who can help them win. Does that mean that they'll go outside the organization to get one or just that they'll give Shalrie Joseph the money he's deserved for years? Or, is this all just a big gimmick to get season ticket holders to stick around?
Houston Dynamo: Assuming, of course, they aren't still bitter from signing Luis Angel Landin for way too much money last time they tried a DP experiment. Sure they could use more help on defense than offense, but they still have the 3rd lowest number of shots on goal in the league.
DC United: Yeah, there's not much good going on in attack here outside of Najar and they've put the money up for DPs before.
Expansion clubs: This idea is a little more out there, but signing JPA would give instant credibility to either Vancouver or Portland's attack.

Also happening last night:

Chicago Fire 0 - 2 Kansas City Wizards
Kansas City had to win in Chicago to have any hope of making the playoffs and they did. Teal Bunbury scored another goal, got an assist, and had a couple other good shots. He's already turned down a callup from Canada (who he also has the option of playing for) holding out hope that he could play for the US one day. Given the terrible play of our forwards recently I say make it happen; let's call him up.

Who Won The Vancouver/Portland Draft of Drafts?

Future MLS clubs Vancouver Whitecaps and Portland Timbers held a draft yesterday where they selected which priorities each club would have. Vancouver won the initial coin toss and here are the results:

1. Vancouver - MLS SuperDraft (#1 Selection)
2. Portland - Expansion Draft (#1 Selection)
3. Vancouver - Allocation Ranking (#1 Ranking)
4. Portland - Designated Player Ranking (#1 Ranking)
5. Vancouver - USL Player Priority (#1 Priority)
6. Portland - Discovery Ranking (#17 Ranking)
7. Vancouver - Waiver/Re-Entry Draft (#17 Selection)
8. Portland - Lottery Ranking (#17 Ranking)

On the whole I think Vancouver misused their first-pick advantage and did worse than Portland in this draft.

Being first in the expansion draft is MUCH better than being first in the SuperDraft. By being first in the SuperDraft, Vancouver picks 1, 19, 37, 55 and Portland gets 2, 20, 38, 56. That's only 2 picks of any real advantage, and the difference between first overall picks and second overall picks in SuperDraft history is negligible. In fact, you could make a case that the #2 pick has performed better over the 11 drafts they've had.

2000: Steve Shak, Nick Garcia
2001: Chris Carrieri, Ali Curtis
2002: Chris Gbandi, Taylor Twellman
2003: Alecko Eskandarian, Ricardo Clark
2004: Freddy Adu, Chad Marshall
2005: Nikolas Besagno, Brad Guzan
2006: Marvell Wynne, Mehdi Ballouchy
2007: Maurice Edu, Bakary Soumare
2008: Chance Myers, Brek Shea
2009: Steve Zakuani, Sam Cronin
2010: Danny Mwanga, Tony Tchani

To complicate matters, if Vancouver thinks that Omar Salgado is the best player available, they shouldn't want the number 1 pick since he can't play for a Canadian team for 2 more years. Let Portland take him #1 and then get whoever was at the top of your draft board next.

Meanwhile, in the expansion draft, Portland is going to get to select before Vancouver 10 times. Plus, Portland gets to set the tone of the draft early. Every expansion draft has a rule about how many players an existing team can lose. In this draft, since there are two expansion teams, it's almost guaranteed that no MLS team will be able to lose more than 2 players. Now Portland gets to hold Vancouver's feet to the fire after each pick. Vancouver knows that if they don't pick from the same team as Portland, then Portland can make all of those players unavailable by selecting another player from that team. That's a confusing couple sentences but hopefully you get it.

Here are the last 4 expansion drafts (Toronto, San Jose, Seattle, Philly)

2006 - Toronto FC
Paulo Nagamura
Danny O'Rourke
Jose Cancela
Adrian Serioux
Nate Jaqua
Rod Dyachenko
Jason Kreis
Tim Regan
Ritchie Kotschau
Will Hesmer

Note: Toronto basically gutted this roster by trading these players to other teams for other players, allocation money and draft picks. They got $125,000 for Kreis (although he would've been nice as a coach), Edson Buddle for Tim Regan, and 2 2008 first round picks for Nagamura and Dyachenko. Smart stuff.

2007 - San Jose Earthquakes
Ryan Cochrane
Clarence Goodson
Ned Grabavoy
James Riley
Joe Vide
Ivan Guerrero
Brian Carroll
Jason Hernandez
Gavin Glinton
Chris Pozniak

2008 - Seattle Sounders
Nate Jaqua
Nathan Sturgis
Jeff Parke
Jarrod Smith
Khano Smith
Peter Vagenas
Tyson Wahl
James Riley
Stephen King
Brad Evans

2009 - Philadelphia Union
Jordan Harvey
Andrew Jacobson
Brad Knighton
Sebastien Le Toux
Stefani Miglioranzi
Alejandro Moreno
David Myrie
Shea Salinas
Shavar Thomas
Nick Zimmerman

There aren't many world beaters here (although Clarence Goodson and Brad Evans are US Internationals) but TFC, Seattle and Philly should be very happy with their takes.

The rest of the selections are single use priorities, most of them involving the rare occurrence where two teams file paperwork for a given player on the same day. Allocation Ranking is obviously the most important and most likely to be used, so good for Vancouver not messing that up. Again though, they were either going to be #1 or #2, so unless they are fighting with Portland for a player it won't make a big difference.

Random note: if the Discovery Ranking had been #1 and #2 instead of #17 and #18 it may have been worth the third overall selection.

No huge advantage is gained on the rest of the selections by either squad, at least not enough to make up for Vancouver's mistake of selecting SuperDraft over Expansion Draft.

2 Stories From Today

1) MLS Players Association released an updated list of player salaries. The price tag for some of these additions:

Thierry Henry - $5,600,004
Rafael Marquez - $5,544,000
Nery Castillo, Forward, Chicago - $1,788,060
Mista - $987,337
Branko Bošković - $516,000
Alvaro Fernandez - $300,000

At first glance, "wowowow" at Nery getting nearly $1.8m and Mista getting almost $990k. I can kinda understand the Nery number since he got stupid overpaid a few years ago by Shakhtar and every loan deal is going to require picking up a player's current salary.

Mista seems like a bad deal by TFC.  Even though he's been in La Liga, he's only scored 5 goals in 61 appearances over the past 5 years. Not exactly a world-beater they brought in, but if he performs I guess he can earn that money.

2) US U-20 forward Omar Salgado's loan to the Vancouver Whitecaps for the rest of this season is apparently not going to happen.

The former Chivas youth player was signed to a Generation Adidas contract by MLS with the plan being to loan him out to a team in USSF-2 until the MLS Superdraft. The initial choice was Vancouver, but apparently FIFA rules complicated their attempt at bringing in 16 year old.

He was originally registered in Mexico when he was in the Chivas youth system and hoping to play for the Mexican National Team. Recently he changed his mind and was let go because of the Chivas policy to only use Mexican players. Because he's under 18 he can only transfer his registration to another country if his family moves there. His family has already moved to the US so he can transfer his registration to here, but not Canada.

Apparently Portland Timbers is the best bet for where he'll go on loan now, and they also have one of the top two picks in the upcoming MLS Superdraft. Since he couldn't play with Vancouver for a full year if they drafted him, this could very well be a tryout for him if he goes to Portland.

Portland Timbers hire a coach

The Portland Timbers introduced Houston Dynamo assistant John Spencer as their head coach for next year's inaugural season. Prior to his beginning his coaching career with Houston, Spencer played with Rangers, Chelsea, Everton, and Colorado Rapids among others, also collecting 14 caps for his native Scotland.

Houston's been a very good team with him as the second in command, so he'll be expected to perform well right out of the gate.  I can't find any information about this, but if he had a big hand in the talent evaluation for the MLS Superdraft then he's got a very good chance of meeting expectations based on Houston's drafts since 2006.

2006
1.08 - Patrick Ianni
3.32 - Andre Schmid
4.44 - Mike Chabala

2007
1.13 - John Michael Hayden
2.26 - Corey Ashe
3.39 - Mike Sambursky
4.52 - Eric Ebert

2008
3.42 - Geoff Cameron
4.56 - Jeremy Barlow

2009
3.41 - Danny Cruz
4.56 - Marcus Tracy