This is the exact point that I remember contending with OleGunnar months ago and his reply was the exact same as the one that he just made. I don't know why he's trying to get apologies at this point since the issue that we were arguing about hasn't been resolved at all. Noone argued that Cosmos would actually keep their west coast academy. Just that they might keep thier prospects from it. And no, Olegunnar, I'm not going to sit here arguing about it all over again with you. You just made the exact same point now that you did then, and just like then it's resolution lies with the league office, not you or me.
if they could have kept the prospects from it they would be keeping it open right up until they joined MLS ... you know ... to find more prospects. but whatever ... i understand the rules of MLS are labyrinthine and complicated and even i don't understand them all after following the league for 16 years so i can hardly expect excited fans of a want to be MLS team to understand them either. dream on little cosmos kiddies about all of those cosmos west academy kids and pdl amatuer players you think you will get to sign ... just don't come crying to me when those dreams are shattered as they surely will be
I agree you know alot of about the current state of how academies work for MLS. But you shouldn't rule out the ability for new academy rules to occur, especially with the Cosmos at the bargaining table. I have a feeling a few more "rules" will be changed up by 2013.
Sorry dude - i dont agree with tihs. As much as I am a Cosmso homer - I dont think the league is going to change the rules for the Cosmos. If they did, they would not have had to cease their West Coast Academy. 1 of 2 things happened 1) The Cosmos ********ed up and did this academy without doing their due diligence or 2) The Cosmos really wanted Iraheta badly, and bought them to try and lure him to the East Coast. I dont know, but at the end of the day, i dont see the league changing rules that much because the Cosmos want in. I do think as the academy system grows and gets stronger rules will change, but not so much just because any one team wants in.
It is not about on changing the rules, but how to interpretate them. OleGunnar20 said a lot of things, among them there is only one point that made me wonder: Cody Arnoux. The rest, I believe, is irrelevant. I believe Cosmos is betting that MLS will allow them to keep members of its actual roster (read NY Cosmos PDL team) if the club joins the league in 2013. This will be possible if the league recognizes that the case is similar to Seattle, Portland, Vancouver and Montreal. That is when Cody Arnoux question comes to play. I did not understand it. I hope Ole Gunnar can help. Every single player from those teams D-2 roster never passed by the MLS draft. After all, any of those teams were MLS's in the first place. So, what made Arnoux's case different? Best.
Arnoux was offered an MLS contract prior to playing in England and then signing a subsequent contract with the Whitecaps so as a member of MLS the league had prior rights. This has been brought up before and is not even a remotely similar case. That was simply a case of MLS enforcing rights to a player that they had a tangible claim to. Olegunnar's argument basically comes down to MLS not giving the Cosmos any protections over prior signings that they gave to the USL/NASL clubs. He forgets that prior to Seattle joining the league those protections did not exist either. MLS' expansion guidelines did not originally recognise the contracts of players brought up from outside of the league. MLS, being a single entity, required Seattle to disband their USL club and release all of their players from their contracts. These players would then either be absorbed into the league or released to sign contracts with other clubs. Rules were changed in order to accommodate Seattle because Adrian Hannaer negotiated with MLS to recognise their USL rosters as basically defacto members of a continuing club. That precedent was set to satisfy the Sounders ownership who did not want to lose the rights to their better players whom they had scouted and discovered like Sebastien Letoux and Roger Levesque, but it also included players that they had signed in the season prior to joining MLS for the express purposes of bringing them into the league with them such as Sanna Nyassi. Portland, Vancouver and Montreal have all utilized this to varying success. But there is no doubt that Seattle's success in that first MLS season was at least partly dependent on that rule being in place. Where he comes down here is that MLS will not grandfather the Cosmos academy. He makes a claim that they must have an MLS academy then immediately refutes it by allowing that MLS grandfathered Vancouver's entire existing residency program, which was a major sticking point in their expansion. The Whitecaps were considering turning down their expansion if this was not done. People tend to not like to pump millions of Canadian dollars into things and then have it taken from them,... such as funding a multi-million dollar residency program and then having the fruits of that program taken from them without compensation. If anyone followed Canadian sports coverage during the year prior to their expansion this was well documented. By 2013 players within the Cosmos system will have benefited from 2 years of training within their academy not just one. This explains the timing of the closing of the West Coast Academy. And prior to joining MLS a majority of the homegrown restrictions will not apply so long a regular academy requirements have been followed as it was with the Whitecaps who regularly poached from other regions prior to joining MLS, since not being members of the league they were not bound by it's regional restrictions, with the Arnoux case being an exception since he already "belonged" to MLS. In general FIFA terms, MLS actually had no rights to this player as he never actually signed with the league, but with Vancouver joining this single entity, he fell under the discovery clause. It all comes down to interpretation; does MLS recognise the Cosmos as having spent money and contributed to the development of the players within their academy. Outside of a similar instance as the Arnoux one, it will be hard for MLS to deny the Cosmos the same exceptions granted to Vancouver. I'll look for a link to the old thread but this has already been hashed out at length and it's very clear where the arguments rest.
okay a few points. A. it is important to remember that the sounders, whitecaps, timbers and impact are all very different cases than will be the cosmos. their teams were D2 ... they were fully professional and did not contain any amateurs. that is a HUGE distinction. amateur players must go thru the draft to get into MLS ... they can of course be not good enough prospects that when their draft class comes up they are not wanted by any teams and are thus not put into the draft and thus usually sign with D2 or lower teams ... sometimes even PDL teams. but not actually participating in the draft because MLS rejected you and sent you packing to the lower levels where you laboured away, got better and eventually after being a PRO for a number of years found your way into MLS thru the discover process is not the same thing as the cosmos taking amateurs and trying to sign them straight to their future MLS team. none of the existing MLS expansion teams that had prior D2 teams were allowed to do that ... and in the case of say Cody Arnoux a guy who bypassed the draft to go to europe MLS even put their foot down on a guy who would have gone into the draft but opted out. so if they aren't going to let a fully professional player who dodged the draft be signed to an MLS expansion team (thru the 10 players from your current D2 squad can be signed to MLS squad) then they are surely not going to allow current AMATEURS to be signed around the draft rules. B. i stated many times that it is possible that some kids who have spent time in the Cosmos Academy EAST may eventually be able to be signed to MLS squad directly via homegrown rules. BUT, and this is a big but ... firstly they would have to qualify under the "rules" (1 year, training days, etc) but more importantly is whether or not MLS will allow those players to be signed as amateurs directly to an MLS team. by which i mean that the Vancouver players who were signed directly to their MLS team but counted as homegrown were, as far as i can gather, already PROFESSIONALS signed to PRO contracts on their D2 team ... so just like older players who they had signed from abroad or who were domestic but had washed out of MLS say, they simply used the expansion rules of 10 D2 team members being allowed to be signed to the MLS team and they didn't run into a Cody Arnoux like problem because none of those academy graduates turned pro at the D2 level were ever wanted by the MLS Draft (as in when they were eligible no MLS team wanted them so they were essentially "undrafted" or i more accurately "not invited to the draft"). if that is the case then it doesn't bode well for the Cosmos because obviously, most of the kids from their East Academy that played with the PDL team did so as amateurs, not as signed professionals who the MLS had passed on ... and therefore to get into MLS they need to go thru the draft. on the other hand IF Vancouver signed those two "homegrown" talents directly as amateurs from their academy to the MLS team then there is hope that MLS might let the Cosmos do the same ... BUT that would have to be from the EAST academy only because obviously MLS has very strict rules about academy territories and would NOT allow the Cosmos to sign a kid out of some other team's backyard. so as i said it is 50/50 on the East Academy kids depending on exactly how the Vancouver thing worked which has never been fully explored. if the first option was what happened, the whitecaps signed those amateur players to D2 pro-contracts PRIOR to MLS (ie the players were under the MLS draft radar/not wanted by the MLS draft) then that same thing cannot happen to the Cosmos unless they sign some amateur academy players to pro PDL contracts (which not many PDL players are pros, again most are college students looking for extra games during the summer and who want to keep their college eligibility by staying amateurs) but then if the Cosmos try to do that with a kid who is good enough that the MLS would have wanted him to go thru the Draft you have an Arnoux situation and the league will simply say you cannot circumvent the rules like that and put that player in a draft for the whole league. basically since the Cosmos team is a PDL team with mostly amateur players i suspect (say 75/25 sure) that the league will treat the Cosmos like an expansion team that did not have a prior professional existence (say Toronto/Philly/Etc) which means no 10 direct signings from PDL team to MLS and no "homegrowns" until they establish an MLS academy. but there is a chance that it will be a half-way mix ... they may not allow 10 direct signings from the PDL to MLS team (since again, there probably aren't 10 pros on the PDL team who have already gone thru or been bypassed by the MLS draft or who are foreign pros) but they may allow any eligible Cosmos East kids to be signed to homegrown contracts directly from amateur to MLS pro status (if that is what the league allowed with Vancouver) C. for those that don't know the draft works like this: the MLS signs some really top prospects that it knows teams want to contracts (some GenAdidas some regular contracts) PRIOR to the draft and they go into the draft because the league knows they will be taken (this year some of these players were even foreign low level pros). they also open it up to teams to submit players that they want to see put into the draft pool ... these are NOT signed to contracts prior to the draft (that is up to the individual team that wants them to eventually decide if they want to sign them and for how much). as i understand it if a team asks for a player to be put into the draft they must take them (obviously another team may take them too) in either the original draft or the supplemental draft. that might not be correct, nobody has ever said outright. either way any player who would normally be eligible for the draft (ie an domestic amateur who has finished college and who's next step is playing professionally) but who the mls and its teams decide is not draft worthy is essentially considered to have "been thru the draft" or "bypassed by the draft" and is treated just as any draft picks who are never signed or who are cut by MLS teams are ... eg they are cast into the lower level wilderness to fend for themselves ... they sign whereever they can ... D2, D3, PDL or some obscure foreign country and then if later an MLS team wants them they are signed into MLS as other pros are thru the discovery rules. anyway. i hope that helps .... not always the clearest thing ... and who knows the league may love the cosmos so much that they make all sort of rules exceptions and changes for them ... but i tend to doubt it (i mean who do you guys think you are? the la galaxy? ) and it is probably safer to err in your expectations on the side of caution and not the side of fanciful "everything will go our way because we are super awesomesauce!"
there is an article on the cosmos website that says Marvin Iraheta Cosmos U-23 on the title but the article is in spanish. can anyone transalate. at least the title if not the whole article
the english version is available here: http://5pointsmedia.tumblr.com/ check out issue 5. Same article but in English. Plus there is pretty pictures.
