caught this on the houston chronicle site. apparently, ching is now a player/coach! http://www.chron.com/sports/dynamo/article/Ching-agrees-to-deal-with-Dynamo-to-be-4317762.php
So, we win MLS Cup this year. Dom goes on to manage the USMNT after Klinsmann gets fired for us not making it out of the group stage, and Chingy becomes the new Dynamo manager. Sounds pretty sweet
IIRC, Greg Berhalter spent his last year at LAG as a player/coach. Maybe there's a limit on how many you can have.
Two years in a row that the league and union let us subvert the salary cap/budget with Ching. Can't complain now when others do it.
It for sure won't count against the cap? Can anyone confirm this? If so, its hard to see why every single team wouldn't just make their highest paid non-dp a "player coach" to help with cap space..
I'm trying to find the rule (if there is one) but there have been several player-coaches in MLS. My guess is that minutes/games would have to be severely limited to get a reduction in the salary hit against the cap. In addition to Beerhalter at LA, DC has had a couple of player-coaches: Wolff and Stoichkov. Daniel Hernandez was one for FCD. Ramiro Corrales was one for San Jose. I'm sure there have been others.
I feel like Barret or Ralston would be coach, Ching is probably headed more towards Director of Players or Chief Performance Officer or some odd sounding front office type job?
How about Player/Accounts Payable Clerk? For all of the FO-Ching public lovefest, this came down to a last-minute atypical deal to either get around a cap issue or more likely, there was a difference in salary or value of Ching. I've asked about this a few times here in the last month because it seemed like there would be no reason to go down to the wire if everyone was on the same page or believed what they were saying.