An interesting question. I'm under the impression Carlos and a scout team identify the talent based on the coach's implied needs. So FdB would say "I need someone who can do the role of X" and Carlos would find options that might fit the budget and then they mutually decide. Tougher to speculate how that relationship works when talking about player sales, tho, since sometimes it's a matter of talent and other times it's about money or attitude. Which begs the question anew - Was Lennon bought with a definitive eye toward an eventual Gressel sale? The other factor here is that this is the first off-season where Atlanta has NOT landed that big name player. Tough to expect the Stripes to make such a move every year but a) this is the first year they've the definitive needs to be filled and b) you'd think on the heels of almost repeating as champs they'd be enthused about the prospect of pushing this train over the top! When you're a darling of a sports league you fight to stay there, not turn cheap and hope for the best.
The odd thing for me is Julien will now make 700k a year, and good for him. But Atlanta just brought in Hyndman for 800k a year. I'd rather have used that money to keep Julien.
Okay, I guess I had the idea that the manager sort of had a list of guys he already knew about and submitted it to the FO to go with the FO's list, and then they got together and made decisions based on the bolded. He may have been. I hope he works out some kinda way or another. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to maintain a winning mentality when we've stated our development intentions. I just hope we're not somewhere in three seasons bragging about who we sent to Europe if we don't have another league title in our cabinet.
I'll take the opposite side of the discussion. I think this team has been clear in it's preferred business model of getting return on investments. Hyndman is 23. Has national team experience. Played abroad. Has a much greater chance of returning on investment than a 26 year old already in his prime. Easy choice for the team in my eyes. Additionally? 4 years at $700K per? Paying Gressel until he's 30 and tying up a big chunk of salary cap is not the way I'd like to see them go. Add in to the equation that they get $1,000,000 in allocation money? if this unlocks the rumored Paraguayan players to be transfered? Major win. I understand, and appreciate, fan sentimentality but this is a prime example of why fans dont run teams
Agree that the club likes to sell on its players, but I'm not sure I'd count Emerson as one of those. He's fine, but I don't see him ever being more than the 5th or 6th best player on a MLS squad. At worst, Julien was the 3rd best player for Atlanta the three years he was here. Only way that makes sense for me is if Barco is expected to be sold soon, and Emerson is expected to be the replacement.
This. Plus Lennon will make at least $250k. (I actually thought it was much more) Both of those players are younger than Gressel and have potential to feature for the USMNT, which could someday prove a marketing coup. But that's a hefty price for potential and seems a risk to take a functioning trophy-winning side and displacing a 26 yo starter and fan favorite who obviously could be had for less than Hyndman. So even if this makes sense from a wages standpoint it could have ill effects on the field and in managing fan relations.
Leaving a club's core intact helps those who we're trying to sell for real money, because everyone's play (and stock) goes up when the team is playing well. Even in FdB's system, an attacking, freewheeling player can probably get big clubs to see their potential. Has a greater chance of ROI than Gressel??? Gressel came out of damn college soccer. He was a draft pick- a nobody! There should have been zero expectations that he'd do anything close to what he's done for us. If you're talking money, Emo has to do something on the pitch for a longer period first. All that NT stuff is neither here nor there. Gress can't get NT experience because he's German, not because he's a lesser player than Hyndman. The last thing we need anyway is another hammy late in the season in a match not involving AUFC. At some point, there has to be a desire to continue winning league titles. Professional athletics is a business but it's the business of competitive athletics- there is a competition taking place amidst all the boardroom talk. We never intended to keep Barco, but Hyndman can't replace him without us missing a beat. We need the Paraguayans. We need somebody...
FdB is here another three seasons, not just one. And it's his team now. My biggest fear is that we'll continue to go deep into the playoffs but not finish the job, and the runs plus another USOC will be seen as acceptable. And the single-elim format makes it less likely that the quality teams will always triumph as they should. God, we were one missed PK from possibly validating FdB's hire in a final v. Seattle. We win in 2019 with him on the payroll, we become the sixth club to have to league titles, and we could have rested on our laurels for the next three seasons while he finished out his contract. Now that club is Seattle and we have that much more catching up to do to silence the yapping from them and other clubs.
Potentially. Remember all the hype around Andrew Carleton? Imagine if he'd begun to show anything close to Donovan-levels of potential, garnered call ups to the senior US side, and so on. I've no doubt the next US side will qualify for the WC, and definitely will be playing in '26. If any United players get to play a role in that resurgence then all the better for team marketing purposes. (Read: Miles Robinson.) Don't get me wrong, I think letting Gressel go was a bad move and I don't expect to see Lennon or Hyndman assisting on a Pulisic goal any time soon, but having a player good enough for the USMNT is, all jokes aside, a good thing and something we hope the academy eventually produces with regularity. In that one sense, anyway, Lennon and Hyndman have a potential upside Gressel doesn't offer. (Until he gets dual citizenship, starts for the US, and makes us all REALLY regret this move!)
I do remember. Don't write that kid off just yet. I still think he'll be able to make a living playing soccer, and that's a better gig than a 9-5 any day. If Gress gets dual citizenship and twists an ankle, it'll be DC's loss and not ours. I hope the academy does well, but I don't expect any academy to produce "better than the league" players if those players aren't better as raw material. They can compete regularly with only those who are there with them. Sure, I'd rather have a player who's good enough for the USMNT than one who isn't. But how much does NT marketing help AUFC's marketing, when the USMNT itself is not all that marketable? We as a footballing culture should be past the whole "event" thing that is the World Cup and focused on club ball. NT callups are to be endured by the fans even as they're sought after by the player.
I do have a serious question: Of the world's most successful teams per league, how many of those teams have the best academy in that league? We all know about Ajax, but they haven't lifted the UCL trophy in over What's Madrid's academy like? Barca's is great, but they're going to drop back to second once Messi sits down. ManU's academy compared to lesser clubs in the Prem? Can we focus on development and still take care of business v. teams with the players I mentioned a page ago?
I can appreciate that comment but isn’t this why Lennon was signed? GunnerJacket hinted at this above. The club went out and snagged a highly regarded player to take his place. While we all love Gressel I’m not convinced that Lennon isn’t an upgrade. Gressel came to Atlanta as a college grad. How old was he? 22/23 years old? Lennon is 22 himself but instead of playing in Providence he’s played in the Liverpool system. Also, the US National team system including winning a gold medal in the Concacaf U-20 Championship. Received a call up to the grown-up National Team in 2018 and played professionally in the MLS. I’d argue that his pedigree exceeds Gressel at the same age, and with appropriate coaching, we should not be seeing a drop off in results I don’t want to get all hypothetical here but would have been your ideal Gressel career in Atlanta? Let’s say AUFC matched the DCU offer. Tack on 4 more years. He’s 30 when out of contract. You’ll have put over $3.5M in to him (3 years@$125K; 4 years@$700K) and he’d either walk for nothing or you’d sell him for peanuts because he’s a 30 year old MLSer. What actually happened is incredible business for the club. Bring in Lennon (who is the Gressel compare and not Hyndman) to take Julien’s minutes and make a profit off Gressel. The club received a million dollars in compensation. That covers the total amount spent on JG over his career AND the transfer fee for his replacement with plenty left over. And this is where you lose me. In my ears this sounds like hysteria because this club has expressed nothing less than a desire to win everything. Their actions to date have shown no ebb in that desire. First, we need perspective. The CBA doesn’t expire until next week. We may have new rules to follow by the end of next week. The club has made moves to cover the depth of the squad. Hyndman, Meza, Walkes, Castillo. The club has paid attention to potential issues and was proactive in acquiring replacements (Lennon) And now the club is extraordinarily well positioned to strike when a decision has been made on the collective bargaining agreement. I lifted this from a commenter on the MLS website. No idea if it’s true but it should be representative. Lifted from a post by “Ezzy Black” “AU seems to be absolutely hoarding allocation money…. /… (they’ve received) $1.0M – Nagbe $1.0M – Gressel $0.75M – Almiron (TAM is good for 4 transfer windows after receiving it) $0.75M – LGP $4.0M – Discretionary TAM” His estimates, with GAM, are around $7-8M to play with. AUFC will be a player for their next wave of transfers, and if they’re smart, they’ll wait until the new monetary rules are released to get Paraguayans or whomever else at DP money under TAM slots. This organization has not shown they’re boneheads. I think they’ll be just fine and plenty competitive come March
This is a great point, while Gressel was a great player and a fan favorite, he is hardly irreplaceable. Now we have plenty of TAM/GAM bucks to make some moves when the new CBA rules are put in place. We are well positioned to make some big signs. Can we at least wait until all the horse trading is done before we bemoan how our once brilliant front office suddenly became a bunch of morons overnight?
He may end up being an upgrade, but his fit into this team's system is yet unproven. OTOH, we've seen what Gressel can do for us. But again, I don't know what the reasoning is in bringing up his NT resume. No kind of comparison can be made between a guy who got called up to a mediocre NT and a guy who won't ever get a callup to a great one. If Lennon gets a callup now, it's risky for us. We didn't have that issue with Gressel, at least. Is there a minumum contract time that can be offered? My ideal career would be for Gressel to stay this year and help us win our second MLS Cup, and then he can leave. I'd have offered him two years to keep someone else from taking him now, which is what happened. We needed him to help us break from the second tier of champions (1 title) into the first (2 or more). The further from our 2018 personnel list this team gets, the more difficult that's gonna become. I was offering a like response to "And this... is why fans don't run teams" Just like for like snark, nothing to argue over. That was going to be another question. Thanks But not a single player (yet) who is better than MLS. Not a single MLS-beater. I'll sleep better when we have another game-changer on board, whether that guy comes later on in the window or from the current group of recent cubs. I agree. But we need to be more than competitive. We were quite competitive last season, and it still ended badly.
Again I hate to see Gressel go, but we did get a pretty good ROI and have a young replacement already in place. That is the model right?
I swear this off-season is testing my cardio a health! Parkhurst retired Gressel gone Nagbe gone LGP gone Pogba gone Meram gone Pereira gone Vasquez gone ...Josef injured ...Big Red spending his offseason applying for his AARP card. Meanwhile, everyone who underperformed last year, Remedi, Hyndman, Barco, and Pity. They’re all still there. What the hell is going on here to my beloved Five Stripes!? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
"Always look on the bright side of life", Doug Robinson had a nice article in the AJC on what happens when Pity and Barco are in the starting lineup together: https://www.ajc.com/sports/barco-ma...a-united-more-success/ziNTu7nYThcrqjwQNFV35H/
Thanks for the dialogue. Hope you're not seeing this as an argument. Simply an exchange of ideas. We clearly have different views. No right or wrong but appreciate the civil discourse. I think your comment on the NT's is strong for internationals as each federation has different levels. Also, past performance is not an indicator of future performance. That said, I do believe for a team in an American league to acquire players that the American federation has isolated in to a pool of elite prospects carries a lot of weight. When compared to a prospect coming from an American college program without a strong legacy? I'll feel more optimistic about the prospect coming from a NT program. There will always be outliers, and Gressel may very well be one, but bringing in cats like Lennon, and Hyndman, that have NT system exposure and international experience excite me. I'm in the camp that believes these guys improve the squad. Couple this turning a great profit on the sale of the college player? Forgive me for not thinking the worst
To be honest, I am just grateful that we can be talking about the 'club vs country' debate. Isn't part of the MLS charter to develop players for the national team? Yeah, it sucks what happened to Miles last year and Atlanta United is right to be mad at Berhalter and the USSF, but in the long run if we continue putting players into the NT pool then we are having success. Even at the CONCACAF level, WC qualifiers are a big step up from the MLS, so the USMNT is an important proving ground for our top domestic players. I remember going to a WC qualifier in 2001. US vs Honduras in Washington DC. DC United played an MLS game after the WCQ match which allowed you a clear comparison between the level of play in the two matches. The speed of international game compared to the MLS was drastic and dramatic.
According to many salary cap defenders it is to have "parity". I understand now what that "parity" is. A club can't reward a player it develops for his performance. You either get rid of someone else who makes more money to give a raise to someone else or get rid of the player you need to give a raise to. You can't have both. Even Gressel said part of the issue is the way MLS rules are, which can make it difficult for teams to give raises to certain players. Can't really blame the FO for this. And if I am understanding how MLS works the more I follow it, LAFC who is stacking up on a lot of South American young talent is next. They won't be able to keep all that talent when raises come into play. And MLS wants to be a big league? I just don't see how.
That IS a serious purge, once you look at it on the screen. I don't know that I can say Remedi and Hyndman underperformed. But I don't think either Barco or Pity is going to suddenly become as great as they were before we got our hands on 'em. I hope we can get a productive (by our standards, meaning a title) season out of both and then a Liga team could do a rehab to restore their skill, but if it doesn't happen soon, it may be too late to get our money out of them. Not every player needs to be a burro