Ola Kamara scored his 11th goal last week for the Galaxy, which means the Crew are 1 O. Kamara goal away from adding $100k in funny money to the roster purse.
Yet, some fans still really like him. I just do not and probably never will understand a segment of Crew fans.
IMPORTANT TRANSFER RUMOR. Falcao pożegna się z AS Monaco?! #InterMiami #ColumbusCrew https://t.co/V5y60hbhBu— Transfery.info (@Transferyinfo) October 2, 2018 Just kidding. I could see him at Inter Miami though. Maybe replicating David Villas MLS success.
Looks like Abu is permanently gone... https://www.dispatch.com/sports/201...nt-transfer-of-mohammed-abu-to-norwegian-club
Nope. Abu would start for a few teams in MLS. Abu's problem is Trapp and Artur are better. This is a case when someone won't get playing time and Abu found a better situation for himself. His salary wasn't a bank buster but he was odd man out. That's not a bust that's the reality of being a pro athlete.
He certainly wasn't great but I wouldn't put him in the awful or bust category. I would put him in the other players are better it's time to move on category.
Abu is terrible. Like, legit terrible. And it is without question a bust, because we paid a transfer fee for him. No idea what the fee was, but Abu was a "Special Discovery Signing" (fvcking MLS rules) which allows a team to amortize all or part of the transfer fee (up to $500,000) over the life of the contract. There is a good chance Abu's transfer was around $500,000 and he made $185,000 a year, which is $40,000 more a year than Zack Steffen. Let that sink in for a little bit...
Steffen is one of the best values in MLS history. Players like Jack Mac and Pogatetz were making way more than Steffen. Did we get a transfer fee for Abu?
Sadly we don’t know because we don’t know what the transfer fee was. If it was more than we paid then no.
I don't disagree. But every coach in MLS brings in players who fail miserably. It goes hand in hand with being a feeder league with very limited roster budgets. It'll always be easy (and mildly entertaining) to reference these players. And certainly Berhalter's had his share. But for my money, for the Crew in terms of total number of busts, no one comes close to Sigi. His hit rate on players he brought in for tryouts was tiny, I have to think far worse than Gregg's. Of course, among all those failures, he snagged GBS and won a championship, so there's that. Berhalter's never signed a player of that caliber (few have). And he's gotten remarkable performances out of players that most of us bemoaned as not possibly adequate to the task when they were acquired (I'm thinking the Kamaras and Zardes, for example). I'll give Gregg partial credit for making Mensah into a marginally affective MLS defender. His real problem, as has been said here, is Santos. It's one thing to bring in affordable, relatively unknown players, and have a mixed bag of success with them. Quite another to drop, what was it, $2 million (?) on a player who simply hasn't performed. Like Mensah, Gregg's sticking with his signing, giving him opportunity after opportunity to improve his performance, and other than not wanting to admit he may have been wrong, I just can't see why. Remember Kakuta Manneh? We loved that signing (hang was over the moon about him). Over 100 goals in Vancouver. Took weeks for him to get a sniff of any playing time here, which had us fans up in arms. In the end, he bagged a whopping 4 goals for the Crew and never really performed well. He trialed in a Germany and failed to stick with a team there; went to Pachuca where he barely played and scored no goals; now he's in Switzerland, with St. Gallen, where he gets occasional minutes and has scored no goals. He's still only 23, but his career seems to have stalled. And I don't think we can blame Berhalter for that. I like Gregg, in general how he's managed this roster. But our wing play in 2018 is absolutely killing this team, with DP Santos being the poster child that personifies that failure. And we certainly can hang that situation around Berhalter's neck.
At the risk of incurring Kyle's wrath I'll point out that Manneh's four goals in limited minutes last year still out perform every. single. one. of. our. wingers. this. year. Manneh is a proven MLS player and contributor. He wanted more money and when he didn't get that he chose instead to test himself abroad, which shows some ambition, and it hasn't worked out for him. That said, there is no reason to believe he wouldn't have at least equaled last season's production here given a similar opportunity. And if he did, he'd be out second most productive player this season. That speaks as much to the dregs that fill this roster as it does to Manneh, but it should be stated.
Where have Opoku and Grella gone? I thought both were better than Santos this year and neither makes the bench. Injured? Attitude? Staying on their feet too much?