Marvin Ceballos

Hooray, defensive help, finally!

Wait, he's not a defender? Well, at least he's a d-mid and can play back there from time to-

Oh. He's an attacking player. Hmm.

Well, better than nothing, I guess. I hope he does well, but this seems like an itch that didn't need priority scratching.

 

Finally, ... something. If this lets them make some deals that rebalance the roster and bring in some of the things (leadership, physicality, tactical awareness, ...) that only Jones seems to provide, then this is a good building block.

 

If you haven't eaten in days, day old bread and a bruised banana start looking pretty tasty.

 

Maybe he can be our Marco Pappa.

 

Getting a Fernando Cardenas, Argenis Fernandez, Mauricio Castro vibe from this one.

 

I know a lot of people on this board would disagree but I thought Cardenas and Castro were both useful players with talent who deserved a better chance than they got.

 

Yeah, I also thought Cardenas was a decent talent. Regarding Ceballos, I'm getting a similar vibe. He's only played in his (poor) domestic league, has youth national team caps but not senior caps, doesn't have his own English wiki page, plays a position where we already have a lot of coverage - this seems a lot like a "warm body" signing to me.

 

The whole "thin on defense" thing just started this year. They'll look into addressing it in the next offseason (assuming we don't squeak into the playoffs, in which case there's obviously no issue...).

 

Maybe it's more appropriate for the roster thread and I know I've said this before, but I can't believe they're having such a hard time finding defenders - decent defenders are dime-a-dozen all over the world and should be the easiest player position to fill up.

 

He is not on their Gold Cup roster.

That is NOT a Jones level signing at all, so it puzzles me too unless like rkupp says it is part of other plans.

 

I'm not sure what's worse, knowing Soares was trialing abroad and failing to prepare, not knowing he was trialing and being surprised.

 

Maybe not but I feel Nguyen & Rowe have asses that need a little gentle kicking. They need to feel some heat.

 

For the folks who think that some of us are too harsh on Burns, this is it in a nutshell.

If you sign a guy who doesn't work out, fair enough, but when you aren't even aware of the contract status of one of your starting players (or worse, you are so arrogant that you think he, with an EU passport, has no other options), and you don't even consider a plan B, you deserve whatever ridicule you get when you say you are "surprised" by the move.

 

Agreed. No part of this team is firing on close to all cylinders right now.

 

I don't think Nicol was ever very good at utilizing Latin American players. He got a bunch, some of them pretty good players, but ended up working them off the team rather than working them into the lineup.

I'm not sure Heaps can/will be any better in that regard. The Bengtson situation has to be strike one.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that last offseason was typical - it was about the weakest roster enhancement that the Revs have had in a long time. No 1st round draft pick (and virtually nothing out of the entire draft), a pretty good prospect (1st round pick) lost in expansion, almost nothing (Hall) from the redistribution draft and NO foreign acquisitions. The only significant additions were Okoli and Woodbury (who, fortunately, turned into a real find) and the return of Agudelo - who hasn't really clicked consistently at all.

This is not to excuse the inaction/failure to acquire players, but you can go back year by year and virtually every year they were more active and signed more experienced players.

This wasn't a typical year - it was the low point in a long, long time.

I'm pretty sure Rowe feels the heat. He's lost his starting spot and has to fight for minutes off the bench. And, I don't see any problem with his effort or preparation.

I thought that Nguyen has had some games where he didn't seem to be fighting too hard, but I think the problem with both players is that they're having trouble getting into a rhythm where the game starts to flow - they're still fighting it.

 

Lots of tweets from the Revs and posts from many here on what a successful draft we had this year. This draft enabled us to re-sign teal, etc. I argued that Teal was a retention move, not a roster building move. Still believe that Teal's future is at right back.

 

Aside from the draft picks (which don't always pan out anyways) it was probably an average or better offseason.

 

I don't think our draft position and our decision to protect Alston are unrelated.

 

Ceballos is an attacking player, but defends very well too. He may come from a pretty poor league but this kid is an incredibly hard worker and has the skills to be a really good player. I'm hoping he impresses you guys as much as I think he can.

 

Thanks for the scoop, drerodz. I hope you're right about him!

 

After watching last night I wish we got Mejia who I think was rumored awhile ago

 

Mejia has great speed. Him and Kendall Herrarte covered Yedlin pretty well. Comunicaciones has been really working hard at trying to get players out of Guatemala.