Tea Light in the Dark Universe: Bobby Wood at Hamburg

Matt Doyle has retweeted an article from a German source indicating that Hamburg may drop Wood to the U-21s if he doesn't unilaterally cancel his contract. I'm pro-player in these type of disputes where a club tries to coerce a player to cancel a favorable deal, so I would play out the contract.

IMO, Hamburg's best option is a long-term MLS loan. I doubt there's an MLS club that will take the entire contract, so Hamburg will have to deal with some of it, but I feel like they could convince an MLS club to pay half of that $4 million annual salary.

 

I'm obviously not in charge of their budget, but I'd take him as a $2 million DP for the Red Bulls in a heartbeat.

 

MLS will try to use its leverage...as they always do....doubt they would just let a foreign club off the hook and still pay 2mil....though your proposal certainly is fair to all sides in the abstract.

 

If they can get some of his salary paid, they will loan him - it's not like they are that flush. This stuff is so stupid by clubs.

 

Must be some other 2 Bundesliga clubs maybe interested or Belgian/Dutch/Turkish. Somebody somewhere

 

The question will be whether they get a decent money offer that requires Bobby to take a salary cut, but sends him someplace he's willing to go - then the threat of a freezout might work. But if they don't have a semi-decent offer, they'll be better off loaning him at the last minute and getting out from under some salary if they can.

 

A bad MLS club with cash to spend and in need of marketing lift might take the plunge (on half the salary).

 

But is Wood all that PR-worthy?

 

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

 

Depends on how his knees are. If they're good, take a payoff and go to MLS. If they're not, stand on your rights. Doubly so if they were damaged coming back early from injury to save HSV from relegation.

 

If he comes back and hits Jozy-level numbers, sure. He's still well-known from his USMNT appearances. Impossible to know if he ever gets back to Union form, but if he's a decent scoring starter in MLS, he's worth a decent salary, esp if he stay in the USMNT mix.

 

Who's desperate? MLS, or Bobby?

 

Some teams at that bottom of the MLS table and maybe Bobby.

 

Oddly enough Bobby isn’t on the allocation list. I wonder which team has his rights.

 

For some reason I feel like San Jose does, but I'm not sure.

 

MLS, desperate? Why? This isn't 2007 and Wood isn't exactly David Beckham .

 

I don't know. I didn't suggest anyone was desperate.

 

It would be a new precedent for MLS to not actively desire (and overpay for) a player with Bobby's USMNT profile and resume.

 

Ha! Unilateral. Good luck with that Hamburg.

 

He's known in the business for striking his way out of clubs. He just needs to insult the coach, get loaned to another club that will then eventually get relegated again

 

Are people still salty about the way he left 1860? They're in the 3.liga now, and were obviously having issues with ownership and management when he forced his way out. I mean, why in the world would he want to stay with a club that has such serious issues?

AFAIK, he's never been known for causing trouble with any other club...

 

"He's known in the business" for being a 26 year old with 72 B1 games, 10G, 4A, 90 B2 games, 23G, 8A, 45 USMNT Sr. caps, 13G... He has steadily climbed from a 3 league side to the B1. He's shown he can help a B2 team a lot, but struggles to impact on poor B1 sides.

But at least he is no longer languishing at the bottom of the B3...

 

what exactly happened there? He spent years with them,that much I know.

 

1860 management, and a few fans, determined he was not good enough for B3, so they forced him to go off and get B1 contracts.

(It's probably documented in excruciating detail at the top of this thread someplace...)

 

And White/Blue is still salty from that departure. The thread got rather spicy when all of that went down.