Per multiple league sources, Chicago Fire has traded Kennedy Igboananike to DC United for TAM and conditional 3rd-rd draft pick.— Paul Tenorio (@PaulTenorio) July 29, 2016 Thx, Jay!
Good move for DC. Igbo will help fwd line right away. Source says Fire keep majority of salary and he will remain DP on their roster. But...— Paul Tenorio (@PaulTenorio) July 29, 2016
I didn't know who that was. I had to look him up. He came from Chicago, and has a scoring rate of one goal every five games? He sounds about par for the course for a DC signing.
I'm not absolutely certain on this, but as I recall, he knew nothing about soccer until he start covering Orlando City!
Close, but not totally true. He did cover fluff pieces on DC United for the Washington Post here in DC from time to time in between local sports coverage. He worked here for like 5 years, but did way more Skins, Nats, College and High school coverage than soccer.
When we traded for Mullins I argued that it did not mean we expected Mullins to start--in fact, I argued the reverse, it looked like a move that was set up for another one to follow it. Unfortunately, I don't read this one the same way. This, to me, looks like the move that means no one else is coming. Kennedy made $900k this year for Chicago (who I'm told are paying most of his salary and against whom his DP slot will count), brought in at that price off basically one good year in Sweden (in which he was joint second in scoring with 14 in 29 games). He's been a bust. (They also brought in David Accam from Sweden at the same time, who has been more successful.) There's always a chance for the 'change of scenery' effect, but the Allsvenskan is not so good a league that you just expect anyone who can score there to score here, especially if he's been given a shot with one MLS team already (and as I noted one that was really only a top scorer once at that level). That appears to be what DC is hoping, though, because at this point given the sheer number of forwards on the roster, to include three that have been acquired in just a couple months, it doesn't look like they'd likely be in the market for more of them. At the end of all this shuffling the front six might be better. . . marginally. But that would count as a disappointing window for a team at the red line that was looking to do something this year (if that is really what DCU is at this point) and had some means by which to do so.