After all that thunder and bluster Montreal traded Ching to the Dynamo for a conditional draft pick. Really? That was it? I guess you could say that Montreal just wasted an expansion pick, or they gave away quality for basically nothing, or they wasted everybody's time. Certainly that last thing ...
I'm not sure what Montreal was thinking with that pick other than to hold Ching for a ransom. Ching was never going to leave Houston for family reasons (especially to go to Canada). His wife is an MD either still in residency or recently graduated and wouldn't be licensed to practice north of the border without going through a process that would likely have taken longer than Ching's time in MTL anyway. I can't blame the guy for not wanting to leave his family again (his wife was in med school in the Bay Area IIRC when the Quakes moved, which he wasn't pleased about at the time) /posted from night call at the hospital.
I enjoy transaction speculation in the offseason, but I just found this story annoying. I'd say that Houston "won" in the end, but man was the journey unenjoyable.
Sounds like a win for the Dynamo! I very happy we get Ching back for the stadium opening and at a discount 2!
I agree, when I first heard Jesse Marsch's pick, I thought the whole thing was going to be some kind of hostage deal. Seems like that's how it played out. I never thought Jesse was that great of a player, but now I think he must be a scumbag too.
This is the best outcome on the field, Ching playing in the new stadium and retiring with Houston, but I think both sides deserved to be punished by the universe and unfortunately only one was. Montreal deserved to be punished for not knowing enough about MLS on both a soccer talent evaluation level and a soccer economics level, as they believed they were taking Ching hostage when hostages have value whereas they got an aging often injured player who is not only in decline but pretty much at the end of his career, that their own fans have absolutely no emotional attachment to, and they would have to pay him $400k. Worst hostage ever. Meanwhile, unfortunately it looks like Houston and their coach and fans got away with being total b*****s about the whole thing and whining even though Montreal played by the rules. Sorry it doesn't matter if it's the face of your franchise and you're opening a new stadium, you still only get to protect the same number of players as every other team, there is no "Dynamo Ching exception" to the rules. And their fans had the nerve to blame Montreal for the whole thing, instead of their own organization for leaving him unprotected. Yes Montreal were being d***s, but they should be d***s if it's in their best interests (which it wasn't in this case, as stated above), this is competitive professional soccer not tiddlywinks, stop crying like little b*****s you are embarrassing Texas. In professional sports, having your team run by d***s is not a problem, having your team run by incompetent people is, Montreal fans should be concerned. Wow, that "MLS favoritism" conspiracy theory is so awful it must be sarcasm directed at all the other bad conspiracy theories, right?
Or, to put it this way: Montreal used their 1st pick in the expansion draft on a conditional SuperDraft pick (probably 2nd round) Houston gave up said pick for between $150-$200K "allocation money" by way of Ching's salary being reduced. At worst, Houston loses the 1st round pick they picked up from Portland and retains their natural 1st rounder. Jesse lost badly on this one.
Jesse Marsch Fail. Everyone saw this coming, most everyone predicted how this would play out. Seriously, Jesse....seriously.
All of this saga for a draft pick? Well I know Ching did not want to play for the Impact but the Impact come up the biggest losers here. They A. Have no real forward with less than 1 month to go till the start of the season. B. Could not convince Ching to stay at all. He took a pay cut to return to Houston for god sakes. c. Over all the Impact look really weak coming out the gate... When your biggest signing is still Nelson Rivas we got problems.
How soon one forgets Ruthless People. Brian Ching and Bette Midler. Now I want to see the sequel with Ching, Danny Devito, Judge Reinhold and Bill Pullman.
This ranks up there with one of the great clown moves by an MLS FO in the league's history. As others have stated, Marsch makes a complete fool of himself in this deal. Someone should list all the expansion draft players Montreal passed on by choosing Ching instead of another player.
I'm guessing that it's either going to be the worser of Houston's two 1st round picks if Ching does well and a 2nd rounder if he doesn't. Either way, I think Montreal did well, as I doubt any of the players they could have selected would have been worth that much in a trade, and I doubt they would have started anyway.
So if you take a player hostage and you get more than expected to send him back you pulled a Kreis but if you send him back on the cheap you pulled a Ching?
Let's just start with the most obvious one.....Danny Cruz was left unprotected by Houston and Montreal could have had him instead. Is he a perfect player? No and he is is pricey in the final year of a 4 year GA MLS contract, but Montreal could have taken him. He's still very young by MLS standards, but now has 3 years experience and I think he's shown that he has good pace and an incredible work ethic but needs to continue to improve on his decision making and his crossing. Personally, I think he's worth more than a late 1st rounder or early 2nd rounder when you look at the miss rate of those picks. He plays a year for you and if he does well you likely sign him to a contract extension with a lower cap hit than his current year. Oh yeah, and Houston has to swallow Ching's full 450K contract which helps you by comparison this year. I'll let representatives of other teams pipe up with who their best options left unprotected were....
I don't see how this is a fail by JM. By looking at Mtl's expansion draft picks, he seems to have picked up mostly cheap depth. So this 'gamble' cost Marsch a depth player. He still got likely a 2nd rd draft pick in the end. And with Ching gone, JM can bring in more players with the cap space. If this is a fail, it's pretty marginal.
If the standard for success on Montreal's end was landing Hainault, then obviously the plan didn't work. Yet expansion picks usually amount to nothing. The best policy with them is to try to convert them into something else. Montreal tried that with Ching. In the end it ended up with a conditional 2nd round pick, which probably has the same value as the expansion pick. So I don't see where the Impact lost anything here. The team already has Justin Braun to lead the forward line and it now has an extra $450K to spend on players. Expansion teams are building for the long-term, so it's not like this move somehow cost the Impact a shot at glory in 2012. What Montreal really needed to gin up the price for Ching was a third team interested in him. Ultimately it turned out there wasn't much of a market for Ching.
According to the Chronicle, Brian Ching is coming back in exchange for a conditional 2nd round draft pick Houston Chronicle:
Montreal should have received an allocation in addition to the pick. The only way Houston was able to reduce the salary cap hit on Ching for this season was through the expansion draft process. I have a feeling MLS stepped in at some point if the bad blood in the press was accurate. It really appears that Montreal did Houston a favor on this one.