Who knew we were much more like RSL than we thought and agreed to pay half a salary to another teams player. A player yet we got nothing in return for and that turned out to be the esentially the 2nd MVP of a MLS Cup caliber team. Ives Galarcep with the details: Many didn't like it when he was "traded" away for a pack of smokes and some beef jerky. Wonder if they'll like it even more when they find out we've also been paying for Slurpies and Big League Chew to one of the rival neighborhood top scorers at the PacMan machine too. Don't ever, ever structure these deals like this, ever - curse you Curt Johnson for this desperation signing at the end of your reign. Word has it you merely watched a few Video tapes and looked up his wiki before paying him what you did. You put the new organization in a bind and forced this nonsense. Dave was great, it wasn't his fault - I'm pissed that the new regime was essentially pressured into such a deal. An early blunder by any standards whether or not it could be helped. The league should not allow deals like this. I think RSL payed a large portion Mathis' salary for two other teams (and still is).
Yeah I brought up this article in the KC alum thread. So esentially we traded vdb to NY for a supplemental draft pick as well as the honor of paying half of his salary for the remaining two years on his deal that just expired.
I would say with the knowledge that we paid half of his salary, it's up there near the top, but still behind the Preki trade.
I don't understand how htis can possibly be. I've been told by many who who were absolutly certain that Curt Johnston was an outstanding GM on top of every little detail... Anyway, yeah, not a good thing. Two other things would be that it would be nice to have NFL level reporting on these things so the reasoning could be better understood and discussed in the moment. Maybe there was a good reason to do this. It's just difficult to imagine one. Why make a trade like that? Maybe the guy was doing blow off of hookers or cheat with an owners' wife or whatever and needed to be excused, who knows? On the list of possible reasons for him to go wether a bad fit for a system, unhappy, or whatever, why pay half the big tab? What benefit is worth that? Seems something dire had to be part of the equastion somewhere. In VdB's games that I saw, he showed the same crossing ability as '07. This season he also added an ability to create his own space which was lacking, for whatver reason, here. His shooting seemed better this season, but I don't know of any numbers to back it up. Clearly he was a better player this season. Some players are better in other systems or environments. Another thing to watch is if many players leave and get markedly better suddenly, that eventually reflects on the coach-'em-up people. The short list today is VdB, Hesmer, Movsisyan. Timing issues are part of it certainly. I'm just saying it's something of which to be aware.
The real question is would he have put up those same numbers here in KC? Personally I doubt it, Onalfo has clearly shown that he prefers players that have a bit of pace and VDB lacks that attribute. Would he have even seen the field under Onalfo these past 2 years? We don't exactly have an Angel to finish off crosses and draw the attention of defenses to open up shooting chances like NYRB does.
I'm sensing a bit of historical revisionism here. When VDB was with the Wizards I remember little but the endless whining about how slow he was.
I do too, but when looking at the trade and what we got in return for having to pay part of his salary these past two seasons now makes this trade look very bad. We got very little for the trade (a supplemental draft pick I believe).
Sure, but at the time I don't recall a lot of teeth gnashing around these parts. If I recall, part of it was seen as the new technical staff cleaning house - VDB was one of Gansler's leftovers. I'm not sure that having VDB would've gotten KC to where the Red Bulls wound up this season. And having the extra 100k probably wouldn't have made a lot of difference, either. Just my opinion.
Actually I remember front office staff coming on here and justifying the trade by telling us how slow he was. But I also remember quite a few fans not very happy that he was leaving.
For reference, here is the original thread, and most of the posts match your description. https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=461474&highlight=bergh
Well that was an interesting read. Only 3 people kind of defended that trade. we just freed up 120k in cap space. Nice.
I havent liked that trade since the day it was done and still wish he was wearing blue. Early on it looked like he wouldnt of fit in our scheme. But this season he would of made a difference. We werent playing the fast paced game we were in 2007. His ability to cross the ball could of helped cure our scoring issues we had most of the season. Now with this revelation, it makes it worse. How do you structure a deal that trades away one of your more talented players for nothing and also agree to pay a portion of their salary. Were we really that desperate to get him off the roster? Why not just release him?
Still hate the trade. Abe might be just as slow up top, and Lopez is only faster if he's giving maximum effort.
oh it was a crappy trade to begin that could only be justified as a salary dump (240K). Horrible with the new revelation that we only dumped half of his salary. I rank it above Klein and Hendo being traded but below Preki being traded on the all time worst trade list.
I'd have a similar ranking only wiht Vdb lower on the list...even with the cash numbers now known. It's difficult to see how VdB would have put up his NY numbers here in KC. Pretty big gap between Preki's trade and everything else. That even takes into account total damage. Preki was only gone for the one season and KC lost a very competitive 3 game series with Miami that year. With Preki, no question KC would have moved on. Collusion/league orders or not, every single MLS team passed at least once on Preki in the Florida dispersal draft.
Let's not forget that this is, to some degree, part of the Klein trade. We traded Klein for the allocation money that was used to bring in vdB.