I was thinking about this...has any other team ever left available in a draft a player who was a current national team player? I mean...Dax is still young..relatively cheap... has this happened before? I sure hope we don't regret this later down the road.. It's one thing to trade him and get picks...or sell him to Europe....but to looser him for nothing? Has this happened before? Did Schellas fall down in this case?
Hard to say until a few seasons pass. Dax showed tonight that he has a lot of good moments with some occasional really bad ones. Shea and Loyd did the same thing. One thing that did stick out was there were five players out there that started last year with FCD. Maybe there was just so many good young players that there was no way to keep them all and Dax was the highest paid so strategically the easiest to let go.
His showing tonight against Chile tonight in a US uni, while not ground breaking, was still good enough to leave you scratching your head as to why FCD did not protect him.
I think we will too but in a salary cap league you can't keep everyone. However since Dax was not a SH pick there is the obvious question of what the real reason for not keeping him really was. How many are left now from before SH took over?
Did I read correctly that Dax was the captain last night? Time will tell but I think we may end up regretting the move, even though I think Alexander will develop into a nice player. Dax did a lot of little things that didn't get a lot of attention as the linking central midfielder, and his passion for the game was apparent every time he stepped on the field. Maybe SH thinks this type of player is a commodity in MLS and hopefully Alexander will prove him right. Either way, best of luck to Dax with the USMNT!
Same point in two separate threads, but I think Dax can thrive in leagues/competitions in which FIFA Laws of the Game are applied. This bodes well for USNT competitions. However, the rouge rules and applications that MLS uses will leave Dax on the injured reserve for significant stretches of the year.
the fact remains is we got nothing for him in return. i can understand schellas thinking that there are other players that can step up and replace dax, but letting him leave for no draft picks, players, and/or money is mind boggling
I've thought about this for a while now, and we got something. We got to keep Avila or whomever would have been picked after Atiba. There were some solid Toros Tejanos on the list, and maybe the FO preferred our guys to anyone available for Dax. It's not a lot, and I still think it was a less-than-skillful bit of business, but it was something, so I can sleep at night.
That is kind of what that draft is set up for. Teams that are deep in talent often do lose a player for nothing. It is possible they weren't ready as it was right after MLS Cup but I doubt they will tell us all that was going on so it's just speculation on our part. I will judge once the season starts and then as Dax's and Alexander's careers progress.
This. You presumably could have traded Dax to someone for a first round draft pick and allocation money which would have allowed you to still protect all the players. I still say this folly isn't on Schellas but on Barry Gorman. I think the expansion draft really snuck up on Schellas who was in full MLS Cup preparation mode as he rightly should have been. It was Gorman's job to work the phones and prepare for the expansion draft.
Not quite correct. Even with Dax traded all the same players would still have been unprotected, so we would have lost somebody else instead of Dax.
After the US-Chile game, and during a bout of insomnia, I got to thinking about a few things, and specifically about how Dax could have fit in on the FCD of the future. Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but from what I understand about Schellas' days at SMU, his preferred formation is the diamond 4-4-2, where the "wingers" (for want of a better word) are pinched in, and the width comes from the wingbacks. Essentially, you have a DMid who stays home in front of the centerbacks (Hernandez), an AMid feeding the strikers through the center and crashing the box (Ferreira) and two CMids who have the ability to both play centrally and get out wide to put in crosses. To me that sounds like a perfect opportunity to get 2 of Dax and the 2 EAs on the field, with the other as backup, as that would appear to be all 3 players wheelhouse. Now obviously you'd still have to think about who would be unprotected - and however you go about it, there isn't really a palatable choice (though for me it would have been Gbandi, I mean Jackson, in a heartbeat). Brek is a possibility, as there's no real call for a true left mid in this formation, but folks would be as equally displeased about that. Coach obviously sees a lot of potential in Alexander, and it seems like the wolves were already hunting for him prior to the draft. Like others said, I think the most disappointing thing about it is that we failed to get any value for a guy who just captained his (admittedly B-team) national side, and the second most disappointing thing about it is that he was the one guy on the team who stayed out to watch the trophy presentation. He wants MLS Cup bad, and he's going to do whatever it takes to be the one lifting that trophy. I for one would have liked him to be doing that for us.
Avila.....who you couldn't trade for anything. So instead of losing Dax for nothing, you lose Avila for nothing, which is a lot easier to stomach. Regardless, that's all speculation unless you can prove there was a valid offer on the table for Dax to being with...and no one can do that.
No you can't, you're vastly over estimating the value you can get for him. Portland, who didn't have the pressure of the expansion draft 2 days away devaluing any potential trade, only got Rodney Wallace and some 4ths. 4th round picks are virtually worthless, so Portland got a outside back off the worst team in the league last year for Dax.
I'd be interested in this as well because I didn't catch much Pony soccer when SH was in charge there. On paper, this team seems to be going more toward two speedy, athletic wide MF (Shea and Chavez) who can take players on 1v1 and then head for goal or get to the corners and provide service to the box AS WELL AS two speedy, athletic wide outside backs who can overlap and provide service into the box. Anybody out there know if this was the tactic employed at SMU during his tenure?
I like Avila a lot. He has skills. I want to see him play more. But between Dax v Avila: 1) Who is the better player now? 2) Who is likely to be the better MLS/FCD player in 4 years? For me - the answer is Dax on both counts and by a decent margin.
Only Rodney Wallace? That's a pretty solid piece to the puzzle(not for FC Dallas but for another team). He was a rookie of the year darkhorse in 2009 and looked really good playing on either side of the defense and even in the midfield. Wallace fractured his fibula 11 games into the season in 2010 so it's tough to blame much of the defensive troubles on him. Wallace was picked #6 overall in 2009 and has started nearly every game in his MLS career before getting injured so I don't see how it's vastly overestimating that they could have gotten a lower first rounder from someone or solid allocation money for Dax. It doesn't really matter anymore though.
Started every game for the worst team in MLS. would you take him over Loyd? Jackson? Pearce? Benitez? Would you give up a first round for him by itself? Hell no. For sure not with money. Neither would anyone in MLS. What round a guy was once picked in doesn't mean squat. he wouldn't get off the bench here. Let me put it this way, if they could have gotten a #1 and allocation money for Dax... don't you think they would have? It's not like FCD is run by a bunch of retards.
Odd man out considering salary vs. cap room and lower cost, more malleable homegrown's? Doesn't SH put a lot of value in affordable locals? Seems to me that balancing that out with enough cash for a potential DP level foreign striker...
DC wasn't even close to the worst team in MLS in 2009 when he started nearly every game of his rookie season. They missed out on the playoffs on goal difference. Which is why I said not for FC Dallas....there are equivalent players to Rodney Wallace at other positions that could presumably help FC Dallas but who knows. I'm not looking to get into an argument on Big Soccer over purely hypothetical situations, it's cool he's gone and I hope he does well for DC.
22 Status Active Height 5' 11" Born San Jose Costa Rica Weight 155 AboutStats.MLS Experience 2009: United’s first pick in the 2009 MLS SuperDraft – and sixth overall – was youngster Rodney Wallace, who left the University of Maryland early to sign a Generation adidas contract. Playing as either a defender or midfielder, the Costa Rican native quietly became one of the steadiest players on the Black-and-Red squad, and has been rewarded by playing the most minutes on the team (3,117) in all competitions. With three goals and three assists in 28 League games (25 starts), Wallace provided an offensive spark to go along with his tough-nosed defense. In all competitions, the 21 year-old appeared in 38 games (30 starts) and collected three goals and five assists.
Sorry if this is old, but did y'all see this goal by Dax in practice? http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=6060504&categoryid=2378529