Camille Abily traded to FC Gold Pride

On a quick glance, it looks like LA did not come out on top in this deal. I mean, I'm not sure which FCGP International discovery player's rights LA got, but still. DiMartino for Abily straight up? Not a deal I would have made. Just how much salary does LA need to shed?

 

This is the most dumbest move EVER!!! This is how I understand it;

We loose Camille Abily gain DiMartino and 14th selection of the draft and right to one of there international discovery players, GREAT!!!!! Honestly this team is completely different from last years team. I think all the Sol fans had gone to love this team the way it was. We all love Camille, Zerboni and Falk So far the players on the team are:

GK: Karina LeBlanc, Britney Cemeron

D: Brittany Bock, Stephanie Cox, Manya Makoski

M: Shannon Boxx, Aya Miyama, Tina DiMartino

F: Marta

 

Major ouch for the Sol and risky move by team. Hard to trade away proven WPS talent and hope to replace it with the equivilent (never quite know what you get until new player actually plays in WPS game or two).

Her shoes will be hard to fill regardless of who they bring in.....without Camille down the stretch last year, the Sol was a different team and struggled.

 

Agreed, the Sol have been too quiet about the deal so far.

The key could be the international discovery player. If LA was unable to sign one of the two players they had been talking to (Scasna and Paaske-Sorensen) and they can sign the player they get from Gold Pride, the trade might look quite differently. Has anyone heard who the international discovery player is?

 

HULA changed her picture!!!!!!!!! i cant believe she is not in the Sol anymore

 

What a god awful deal, what is wrong the sol's GM? Even if their shedding salary, to only get that for Abily is absurd.I would wager a lot of money that Abily is not very happy. Apparantly dimartino makes them more versatile somehow according to the article and also it's an international defender, so take your guesses.

 

I think we should trust Charlie on this one. I think maybe there is more to this story to come.

 

It all depends on who this top international defender is and if they get her to play this year, then I might say the deal is a little more fair but losing Abily in the midfield is a huge loss. I will hold my tongue though upon hearing who the international is.

 

THIS SUCKS.. Camille is better than Boxx and the best thing this team had going for it besides Marta. Why would you trade the second best goal scorer in the league and a defensive genious. If they were able to get a 1 one pick then maybe or need the money to sign another Brazilian player to apease Marta maybe. I am so confused.

 

It better be Pele, because you just lost Abily.

 

This is very sucky, I have a more offensive word I want to say but I don't want my post to get deleted.

Camille Abily was my favorite player and the best thing The Los Angeles Sol ever had. If she had stayed with the Sol throughout the playoffs they would have won the championship and now they screwed things up.

She was the second leading goal scorer and one of the best players in the WPS and one of the best players in the world. so .... I don't even know if I'll support this team anymore.... bad move Sol.... bad move.

 

I am really surprised by this.
It really looks LA will rebuild half of the team from scratch
I guess there something we did not see that was malfunctioning in the team that finished first of the regular season by a mile.

 

Wow, LA had the easiest off season situation of all the teams: Replace Han Duan and maybe find a backup keeper. The End.

I know a lot of teams have been making significant changes in the off season to improve there teams, but LA's changes seem like they are actively trying to make themselves worse.

If they just got rid of Camille you could reason, hmm, maybe they need cap room. Huge bummer, but at least it would be understandable. But combine that with the fact that before that they got rid of two players (Zerboni and Falk) that are the definition of solid, and likely inexpensive comparatively it just doesn't make sense. Either dump a bunch of solid players to keep your superstar or dump your superstar for solid less expensive lesser-names. Dumping both seems like you hate all that amazing chemistry your team was able to create for a season. Personally I can't even imagine a greener grass...unless they are working on Cristiane if that is even possible (which I hope not), who knows?

All I can hope is that Montoya doesn't make Abiliy miserable, because she's too fun to watch.

 

I'm going to miss Camille a lot but I agree, we need to trust Charlie on this. After all, he found her in the first place, didn't he? It's not like most of us knew about her -- who (in the US) knew about any of the French players since Marinette Pichon retired?

Salary and an international slot may be a factor here, but also, like many others, I think Charlie really believes this is a very strong college draft.

As a UCLA fan, it's impossible for me to be completely objective about Tina DiMartino. But as much as I love her, like everyone else here I don't think I would've traded her for Camille straight-up. But in this draft, going from 20 to 14 may be fairly significant. Also there's the unnamed discovery player and the surmised money issue which of course I know nothing about and is pure speculation.

Catherine Paaske-Sørensen is, or was, an extremely good mid and may be roughly comparable to Camille although Catherine is also 5 or 6 years older, I think. As I've said before, she stood out at the 2005 Euros and I felt she was Denmark's best player. So she may go a long way to filling Camille's role.

A midfield of Shannon Boxx / Aya Miyama / Paaske-Sørensen / DiMartino is probably superior to our midfield last year of Shannon / Aya / Camille / (fill in 2 or 3 names)

Still, like everyone else, I'm going to miss Camille as well as Allison Falk, McCall, Val, Sharolta, Martina Franko and the others. Some of the other teams last year arranged meet-and-greets at games for some visiting players -- like Marta and Abby. Let's hope the Sol can do that for Camille and a couple of the others this year.

I have to add - as much as I love Tina DiMartino, I'm actually, like everyone else seems to be, heartbroken that we traded Camille.

 

yeah after the shock went through my body last night I calmed down and I guess I'm not into the business side of things.

The truth is I don't follow sports(WPS is the only thing I follow religiously) and all this trading and getting new players is hard to get used to even though I guess it's common thing.

I guess what I'm saying is I liked LA SOL the way it was, I didn't think it needed to really change. I really liked all the players and I got to meet many of them and I thought they had amazing chemistry on the field.

I guess I'm too idealistic and I don't zone into reality too much sometimes.

Camille Abily while I didn't know her before the SOL really made my season ticket experience that much worth it and I honestly thought she was our best player besides Marta.

I don't understand how we can just get rid of her... like she meant nothing to the team... I don't understand business I guess. A lot of LA SOL fans are going to miss her and it's going to pain me to see her wear the lion uniform.

 

To me nothing anyone has said makes me
happy about the trade. Camille is such a
terrific person and amazing player. The
thing that hurts the most was she will
be a Lioness next year. How could they
trade to a rival team like that. If Camille
went to Atlanta it would be better since
they already have alot of former Sol 2009
players. She is such a young amazing talent
I can still see in mind seeing her make
that last minute shoot against Chicago. I
really couldn't believe she was so talented and
has so much potential. Viva Le Blue. Viva Abily.

 

The main reason this is a bad idea or at the very minimum a foolish gamble, (it may reveal itself to be a good one, but utimately a bird in hand really is better than two in the bush, if you will) is team chemistry is something you can't buy and you absolutely can't predict, no matter how good a coach, etc. you are. I think Abily was the glue that kept the team together, just like someone like Xavi Alonso was to Liverpool. And I'm comming at this from the perspective of a Red Stars follower, a team chalked full of talent, that most predicted to do really well, but couldn't, not really because of defence incompetence like people seemed to guess, but because they had absolutely no offensive chemistry for longer than 30 seconds. You just can't over emphasize the importance of team chemistry and it just seems that the LA management is really taking this concept for granted with all there post season moves, that's what I'd be more than ticked about if I was a supporter (and this wasn't a money issue, which it still could be).

Technically this shouldn't even really bother me so much because it's not my team, but not even I like to see chemistry go to waste. Plus, I'm not big on picking on coaches, but Montoya seems to actually have the ability to make players regress and I think it'd be horrible to watch that happen to one of the most entertaining players in the league. It'd be a darn shame.

 

Maybe the Sol coaching staff saw that when Camille went to play the Euros.
And they prefer to build the team around Marta rather than her ? or they did not want the team to be Abily-dependent.

 

Your guess is as good as mine shlj but really all I can come up with are reasons why this is a bad idea. Because to me beyond the chemistry she was creating she was also consistently putting it in the back of the net because of the attention Marta was drawing, and then Marta really got going because Abily was such a finisher. It's the oldest trick in the offensive book, giving your superstar a slightly lesser superstar so that they can distract defenses allowing the superstar more chances to be super.

Marta has actually always seemed to understand the team concept on the field and so did their coach, so the only thing to me that would make sense is that it's management and money. At this point I predict they're going to go the way Man U has this year, still good, but no longer killers. That is unless they really pull a rabbit out of the hat with who they acquire internationally.

 

It's hard to imagine the GM taking a chance on all of this if there wasn't a money issue and that he felt his hands were being tied by salary constraints.

Having said that, this may work out relatively well. Although Camille was fantastic and we'll miss her, our midfield as a whole may be somewhat better now than last year - though not as good as it could've been with her. Catherine Paaske-Sørensen really impressed me very much at the Euros 2005 (didn't see 2009 unfortunately). And Tina DiMartino, though I wouldn't trade Camille for her straight up (unless money issues were putting a gun to my head), is good. She was fantastic for UCLA and there's a lot there to love about her game. I'll repeat what I said somewhere else: a midfield of Boxx / Miyama / Paaske-Sørensen / DiMartino is probably an improvement on Boxx / Miyama / Abily / and plugging in 2 or 3 other players.

We're forgetting how good Miyama was (and Boxx, too). Miyama and Abily both were fantastic for us -- and we can thank Charlie for that because I don't think many of us Sol fans knew either one of those two before last year. There were games where you could say Miyama was our best player -- and like the ones saying that about Camille, those were games that Marta played.

Regarding Camille's goal-scoring - I think she showed a knack for the goal and, as DiCicco would say, that last little bit of composure needed to finish. Something that the international players showed that the American players for the most part didn't. Yet Camille had never scored goals like that before and maybe (maybe) Charlie thinks that 8 goals is a little bit of a fluke. (and remember, 2 of those, I think, were PKs). So she may not be a goal-scoring machine for Gold Pride but it certainly increased her trade appeal (compared to, say, Miyama who was terrific in everything except kicking a ball through a cotton tissue barrier that was obviously guarding the net against her). Still, the danger isn't so much what she does for Gold Pride but what if no one else on the Sol can take advantage of the opportunities that you have when you have Marta around.

I remember that time the ball got around to the right side of the goal and Camille was there and she gave a little fake that sent Hope Solo going to the ground, then she put it in the roof of the net. It was a great moment - the kind of thing you expect from Kelly Smith.

There's no way we're not going to miss Camille and no one should expect Tina D to make us forget her, but Tina's got a chance to be good. She has great ballhandling skills for an American player. But beyond that, she works so hard out there. I mean at UCLA, she wasn't just waiting around in the offensive end waiting to do her thing, she was constantly tracking back to fight for possession. Just a tremendous athlete in that way - like Miyama, a real Energizer Bunny that keeps going and going.

I'm a UCLA fan so I can't be completely objective about Tina. But she's one of a handful of American players who I think may actually have the skills to actually learn how to do a few things from Marta and I wonder if that enters into Charlie's thinking. She didn't stand out especially last year but she was a true rookie and overall Gold Pride was a bit out of sync most of the year.

I really do trust Charlie. He knows his stuff and he has a knack for building winners. All these players we loved last year (besides the well-known names like Marta, Shannon Boxx and Stephanie Cox) - he picked them. Camille, Aya, Allison Falk, Karina, Brittany Bock. So I figure we'll love some of the new players he brings in.

(Speaking of Brittany Bock, we still have her, don't we? This could just be a way of finding another position for Bock to play. I can hear Abner, "Hey, Brittany, never mind the backline, we need you to play Camille for us this year...")

It's still a shock and it hurts to see another team have her. I guess we can always hope she comes back in a couple years. Free agent, wants to come back, play here in LA where Charlie will still have us winning and where she knows we all love her... It's called dreaming I guess.

 

Kolabear Wonderful post, Camille is much loved by us all in LA because she works so hard for all the fans on the field. If DiMartina works as hard as you say, I can see her becoming a fan favorite like Boxxy and Miyama. I will be the first to wear her Jersey #5.
I really hope Camille comes back, I miss her and love speaking French with her ( she is always so suprised if you know a few words.)
Wish her "bonn chance".

 

I second that Kolabear, thanks for that beautiful post. I don't think Camile Abily knew how much the Sol fans cared about her and appreciated all the effort she put into the games. Nobody knew who she was before we acquired her and I remember the very first program I got from HDC was of Camille back in March during the first game and she scored a goal for us and I'll never forget it.

I too will miss trying to speak french to her, even though I suck

I hope she comes back to the SOL if our league lasts longer than we think

 

Thanks all and I'm so glad to hear how much everyone else cares. (And to think, there are people who say "who cares about women's soccer". How little do they know.)

Like I said earlier, other teams arranged meet-and-greets with some visiting players last season. Maybe we suggest one for Camille for the Sol fans. Even if not, let's plan on something when she comes down to play with (ugh) the Gold Pride. Even if it's just to head down to the front in one of the sections and have her come over and say hello. Maybe bring her flowers or something?