Silly season is starting in earnest. I take all of these rumors with a grain of salt, but it's fun to speculate. Torres has recently been in youth Mexico youth camps, but remains eligible for the US. My own gut feeling is that after the two FCD 2003's (Pepi and Che), Kevin Paredes is the next most likely U20 eligible player to move. I've spoken with a handful of agents in the past week and I asked them to give me one player they think is gaining the most buzz abroad. Most answered Kevin Paredes."He's become a bit of a WyScout hero recently, clubs love his tape and potential once he grows into his body"— MLS Transfers (@MLSTransfers) December 6, 2021 LAFC's 17 year old homegrown Christian Torres is attracting attention from Hertha Berlin. I've also heard they're looking into a "wide amount of MLS talent" including DC United's Moses Nyeman. https://t.co/k6oHfNWg26— MLS Transfers (@MLSTransfers) December 6, 2021
After Pepi, Paredes definitely seems like the most likely young player in MLS whose going to move in January. Not that there won’t be others, but I’ll be surprised if he’s still in MLS next season.
I'd go with Bassett, too. We know that he had actually offers from big Euro clubs in the last window, but chose to hunt silverware with Colorado instead. [And if I remember he wanted assurance of first team inclusion and playing time.] This USMNT game against Bosnia might be big for him.
100% agree on Paredas. His upside can be fantastic. High level difference maker type prospect. Even if he doesn’t reach those heights he has those pesky, annoying, disruptive qualities that on the right day can case grief for anyone. When I look at or prospects now, that is what matters to me most of all. Who can be a high level difference make in some way shape or form. I mean Top 5 leage and upper third level team.
Finally some Miles Robinson chatter 🚨 Hearing that Atlanta United CB Miles Robinson is getting serious interest from Bundesliga teams high up in the table, as well as some Premier League teams. Stock has gone up big time with fantastic USMNT performances.Curious if they entertain any offers or aim to keep him.— Roger Gonzalez (@RGonzalezCBS) December 7, 2021
It’s Gonzo, take with a grain of salt as he wants his hits and follows, but does enough to make yo pay attention to him. The question isn’t if he can play at a very good level, it’s if Atlanta U will move him along.
He definitely hits enough that he's clearly got some sources. This is obviously pretty broad and hard to verify either way until we hear more. But if it's true we'll probably hear more reporting along these lines. Miles Robinson is one who Atlanta has been saying there's been no interest, so it's encouraging that we've got a report finally to the contrary. Hopefully it's legit and he gets a good move.
Gonzalez is obviously closer to the truth. Bocanegra claims there's no interest from, I don't know, Brondy even, inquiring what he'll cost. That's not even being a good liar. It's a matter of what's palatable to Atlanta, a club w/ serious aspirations, who spends and sells like a pretty big European club. Cardenas, or one of Atlanta's other beat guys, were posting after the GC that they should demand 10-15 million for Miles. Which is something they ain't gonna get near at his age, whether they deserve it or not. I think this explanation is right: 1468262595316436994 is not a valid tweet id
From a club GM point of view waiting on MR until the cup ends makes sense. If he kills it, or is simply very competent, his price will jump. It;s not that far away either. If he doesn’t they still have a top CB. I get it, but knowing he can probably play for a good team now does wish he could go. I get it, even if I would like to see something different.
I feel with Robinson though he's already 24, his value has probably already peaked and waiting till the end of the World Cup is probably not going to lead to a higher transfer fee. Atlanta is probably going to get offers that aren't in line with their valuation of him, and it'll be a question of whether they are willing to sell anyways and how hard the player pushes.
Obviously they'll get higher offers if he locks down the top strikers in the world at the World Cup. It will validate him at the level of the better European clubs. Right now they don't have many games against their talents to look at. That doesn't mean Atlanta will sell him though. They may raise their asking price even more, or it still may not meet whatever unreasonable demand they have now, let's say it's as high as 15. Orlando were asking 20 for Dike. At some point teams need to be honest w/ themselves in most cases it's not going to get better than now, & could get worse. They should sell high enough & get a ROI that surely exceeds the player's value to them competing in MLS. Also can do right by these guys out of principle & to get get future players to sign w/ them. Though this is where the draft is used against guys like Miles & Dike because that group has less leverage.
In terms of selling: Most teams would be better off optimizing in the short term and selling these guys if the offer reaches a certain threshhold. There's always a bias towards the upside of the players that you develop yourself, but most teams fail to see the potential downside of regression, failure to develop, etc. Teams value potential, and treading water on performance for a year at age 21 is a massive reduction of potential. If I wanted to win in MLS, I'd be willing to sell often, buy longer term developed talent, and use youth to fill in the gaps. There is a minimum threshhold, though. TAM level players in MLS -- like $1.5M/year max in terms of salary+acquisition just don't have a great track record. At best, it's a 50% success rate. So you can't sell a good player for that. You need to at least double that, and probably a bit more. Starting sales point for a good MLS player should be ~$4M. Aside from the player forcing a move, there's simply no way selling someone for $2M is actually going to improve your team if they are a quality MLS player... ...unless they are making a massive salary, it opens up a DP slot and/or you have someone better behind them. But that is what I'd live by: Hold at under ~$3-4M Maximize in the short term but largely sell once I'm near $10M Reinvest the cash in more stable, more developed DPs and use xAM to fill in cracks, keep some of the youth home if they don't want to go right away. Fill in holes with quality youth while I've got em. If they are getting $6-10M bids for Robinson ... they can't replace him with that money entirely because of the salary cap, but they also can't hope to retain him for much longer without using a DP spot. If he gets hurt, has a bad World Cup, or even a bad MLS season ... he could crap out in value altogether. If there's a $4M bid out there ... eh, unless Robinson is demanding a move, I wouldn't sell.
Robinson seems like he might fall into that Aaron Long zone where it's not worth his MLS team selling for what Euro clubs are likely to offer. I'm pretty confident that he could help a middle- or lower-tier EPL or Bundesliga team, but they're not likely to offer enough to get Atlanta interested. I'm not sure that he would be a good fit for better teams in the top leagues, since he's not great on the ball, which seems to be a requirement for CBs these days on the better teams.
The MR transfer has long drawn out soap opera/reality TV written all over it. Almost no one will be happy, and everyone will be able to justify whatever bias they have with regards to the situation.
There are a number of clubs in both MLS and Europe interested in signing USYNT and El Paso midfielder Diego Luna, I'm told.Luna, 18, has visited Anderlecht and other clubs. Interest from Portugal, Netherlands, Spain and Germany as well. He had 9g/5a in 31 USLC apps this year.— Tom Bogert (@tombogert) December 7, 2021
Giancarlo Gonzalez is a good model for this. The Crew allegedly got $5 million for a 26 year old Gonzalez after he had a good World Cup. We have had eight years worth of salary inflation since then; the impression of MLS has improved, and Robinson is an American not a Costa Rican. So, I think we can comfortably say Robinson would get more money than Gonzalez, but how much more?
Hope there's a sell on percentage. Kinda crazy we're 13 years (?!) removed from our last "huge can't miss forward" record transfer fee, which was $10 mil for Jozy from NYRB to Villareal. I don't even think the +3 mil covers for inflation, and Pepi has done a lot more than Jozy had at his same point. Reallllllly hope Pepi does better than Jozy in Europe too, though it's a very low bar.
MLS trade in the works, according to two sources: Sebastian Lletget from LA Galaxy to New England Revolution, which won't relinquish a player in the deal ($$$). Trade window opens Sunday. #usmnt— Steven Goff (@SoccerInsider) December 9, 2021
That would play. It works for all parties except Becky G who likes to party. I thought LigaMX always made a lot of sense because of his girlfriend, salary, & being sold as a USNT'er which is more unique in Mexico. He also fits their style.
For me...................FCD and LAG are going to be two of the more interesting clubs to watch this off-season. Two interesting rebuilds. LAG just cleared out a ton of additional salary cap space if they traded Lletget without getting another player in return.
Lletget really just feels like a Bruce Arena type of player. ...and then I looked into it. Arena coached the Galaxy when Lletget signed there and Arena gave Lletget his first national team cap. This deal is as good as finished.
well, according to other rumors that clears a dp spot for tyler boyd- so im not sure how drastic a rebuild is going to be if its confined to moves within the league.
Might as well put all of the rumors in here......................... 📰 — West Brom are likely to do everything they can that’s possible to sign Daryl Dike in January, and very likely to push very hard for the former Barnsley striker.[@ChapmanJ92] #WBA pic.twitter.com/1GMCIZcWNO— Baggies Report (@BaggiesR) December 10, 2021