Gressel officially done: https://www.atlutd.com/post/2020/01/21/atlanta-united-acquires-11-million-allocation-money-dc-united And Vancouver signs a Ghanaian player from Israel: https://www.whitecapsfc.com/post/2020/01/21/wfc-acquire-owusu
Lennon will make a fraction of what Gressel will earn. Basically he was less than 6 months leaving for free.
What other MLS team has a Pity Martinez or Ezekiel Barco to come off the bench and join the lineup? I'm surprised they moved Gressel as he wasn't expensive and seemed like a pretty useful player.
Interesting thing about Lennon is that he and Gressel have been in the league the same length of time as both started in 2017. Despite that, Lennon will still be younger at the end of this season than Gressel was when he first started. Gressel was 23 and about 2.5 month when he played his first MLS game. Lennon doesn't turn that until sometime in December of this year. Obviously that doesn't mean much but Lennon still has a couple years to grow and become as good or better than Gressel. Now, will he become that good? I actually doubt it. But I don't think anyone saw Gressel ever being as good as his became and he probably wasn't as talented (or nearly as seasoned) when he first came in the league as Lennon is now. Wasn't expensive this year, but he was likely looking to get up to max salary this year. This was his big contract coming up so he wasn't going to settle for some small bump to 250k or 300k. He was going to get paid like a starter or he was going to walk for a free at the end of the year. This way he gets paid, Atlanta gets paid, and he gets the opportunity to become USMNT eligible in the next few years (which is something he has talked about and he knows he isn't getting called up by Germany).
Basically the league allowed him to get paid reasonably close to what he could have received in Europe so it wouldn't be a lose, lose, lose for everyone. It is a lot better to make everyone winners when you are trying to get a deal over the line and the people that run the league are not dummies.
Yeah, I got Lennon and Hyndman's wages confused. My bad. Still, not like the difference between Gressel's and Lennon's 2020 contracts should be viewed as deal breakers. ie: Is Lennon a good enough replacement for Gressel to save $500k? We shall see.
What's the likelihood that Atlanta's moves are foreshadowing a more generous CBA that they plan to take advantage of this summer?
I'm sorry, but this is an awful argument. Which of the key players have they been forced to move on from due to cap reasons other than Gressel? They sold Almiron at a premium and replaced him with an even more expensive player in Pity. Parkhurst retired. Garza was only making $175k and was traded for a nice sum of allocation money. Criticize if you want how they've decided to build their team following the sale of Almiron, but it has little to do with extra expansion money running out.
It's not that cut and dry. Atlanta would have held on to Gressel's rights even after this year - he wouldn't have been a free agent, so long as Atlanta made him a bona fide offer. Sure, he would have been free to go play in a different league, but he'd be stuck with Atlanta in MLS unless some other team made an offer for his rights.
Not from the Sounders, but it is from his current team: 🇦🇹 Unión comunica que el Club Seattle Sounders FC ejecutará la cláusula de salida del jugador Yeimar Pastor Gómez Andrade para sumarlo la próxima temporada a la Major League Soccer de EE.UU.¡Éxitos en esta etapa y gracias por defender siempre con orgullo nuestros colores! 👏🏻 pic.twitter.com/xVVbG7jl8P— Club Atlético Unión (@clubaunion) January 22, 2020
Chich calls MLS the “beginning of his retirement” (if the translation is correct). Chicharito literally in tears over having to move to @MLS is... not what you wanna see 😂 pic.twitter.com/k5In4ZRvym— Across the Pond (@acrossthepond) January 23, 2020 ******** him. Thx, Jay!
Not sure where to put this, but any theories as to how two Argentinian players, new to MLS and the States, who've yet to even play one match in the US, have both qualified for permanent residency status? Inter Miami CF’s Matías Pellegrini, Julián Carranza receive green cards, no longer international players It normally takes players a few years to get a green card. WTF?
Well, shit. Between him and Juan Fernando Caicedo leaving, who am I going to reliably watch cock-up a bunch of easy finishes this year?
My guess is that Inter took advantage of the fact that it signed these players last summer, long before they were needed, and decided to sponsor them for immigration rather than applying for the non-immigrant P-1 visa for professional athletes. That's something that can happen in a few months with some good lawyering, and the team had the luxury of not needing to get them into the squad immediately.
Yeah, I watched him score a brace right in front of me on opening day of last year. I'll reserve my smack talk for someone else that didn't own the team I support. It is much like you won't hear me talk crap to Kei Kamara. I watched a bunch of people do that to him when he was with the Crew and he dropped a brace. General rule for me is if you beat the crap out of my team I'm not tempting fate by talking smack.
What do you mean? The theory was that Miami actually acquired these players last summer, but because they didn't need them to play until March, the club didn't bother trying to acquire P1 visas for them but, instead, sponsored them as employees and sought permanent residency (i.e., green card) status for them instead. A process which has taken maybe half a year or so. How is that like Gressel's case? In any event, were talking about permanent residency, not citizenship.
If getting Green Card immediately was a possibility, Gressel would get it on his marriage and then a citizenship in 6 months.
Gressel does have his green card. Marriage reduces the waiting period for citizenship eligibility to three years instead of five after getting the green card.
What I don't get is that they loaned the players to Argentine teams so they did not stay in Florida, and normally the people in the queue have to take care to stay in the US during the process.