Taylor seems like a deal. Comparing him to a random kind of similar player from SKC, someone who gives you depth at wing and allegedly elsewhere in the attack, Taylor has produced a goal every 527 minutes in MLS, compared to the random someone on our squad who produces a goal every 594 minutes. Yet Taylor earns half what this randomly selected SKC player brings home. BTW, doing the math on his assist numbers, he's about one every 460 minutes, versus one every 527 minutes for the RSSKCP. OTOH, a year younger, so that's a minus.
Sporting have released their roster composition. Pulido, Radoja, and Salloi are the DPs currently (PV said yesterday they'd have all 3 filled currently for roster composition reasons). https://www.sportingkc.com/news/sporting-kc-announces-roster-composition-ahead-of-2024-mls-season
Radoja and Salloi as DPs is borderline comical. Apparently, Salloi addresses the need to add both a No.10 and DP. All without actually adding a player. This is 4D chess roster management. I humbly retract all negative statements made towards Il Capo and Ownership.
Honestly Salloi and Radoja are two of the most important players in the entire team. Possibly the two most.
Radoja and Salloi make no sense. I get that slapping the tag on means you get a budget hit down to the league max, but that's almost $700,000 in 2024, isn't it? Based on the MLSPA numbers from last season, that means we protect about $200,000 with Radoja ($890k) and $400,000 with Salloi ($1.1m), while with Thommy ($1.65m), we would have protected more than $900,000 of budget. I get that to maintain all three young'un spots at a $200,000 cap hit, the third DP has to be under the TAM max, but all three are. What possible reason is there to slap the tag on Radoja or Salloi over Thommy?
When does the MLSPA release roster figures? It's pretty soon, right? I'm really fascinated to get an up-to-date snapshot of the team. More so than in many past seasons...
Sometime in the spring and sometime in the fall, there's never an exact date. Was May and September last year.
Salloi I'd guess a bump up with it year 2 of his new deal. Thommy I could see a drop as well. Radoja I'm not sure yet, esp considering his salary last year went from like $1.5m in the spring to $900K in the fall.
There has been a lot of talk on this forum about Tzionis, but I haven’t heard anybody from the sports media digging into the issue by asking direct questions and reporting the answers. Is there some sort of understood rule about not questioning PV about such things? I know PV will deflect the questions or not comment at all. How about going directly to Tzionis with the questions. If he is permanently banished, he has got nothing to lose by telling us what happened. If they aren’t going to play him anywhere, it’s a total waste of a player slot and salary. Buying him out of his contract is throwing good money after bad, especially when they could have sold him to recover all of his salary instead of asking an unreasonable transfer fee. Is Tzionis holding down an international slot that could have been used? No answers, just speculation.
I mean you answered why people don't ask, PV will just deflect and be vague about earning playing time or players like Afrifa and Vargas being ahead of him. The issue with going directly to Tzionis is that there are certain routes to go about communicating with players as a media member, most involve going directly through the team while he's under contract with the team. If he's smart he wouldn't answer anyway b/c there's nothing good for Tzionis's time in KC (or where ever he goes next) if he were to answer those questions.
Exactly. You can't ask the player directly, what is he going to say? Can't risk being labeled a malcontent. It would be legit for KC media to ask PV to comment on the U22 initiative in general and his three U22 initiative players specifically. Then try to ask a follow up about either Voloder or Tzionis as neither are really playing very much. I know we've focused on Tzionis since he's literally MIA, but Voloder is THE soccer unicorn. A left footed CB. A guy who played U20 German national team soccer. And he gets no minutes unless MLS's slowest player is injured? Frame it like, why is MLS supplementing high salaries for players that are not playing many first team minutes? Isn't the point of U22 to raise the standard of play? How is the standard being raised if the young players you give minutes to are the cheap kids you get from college or your academy over the kids from Europe who have played for matches with U20 Germany or actual Euro Qualifiers and actual UEFA Champions League matches. Why is the club spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on those players if you are just going to draft college kids and play them? Do you really think the kids that played 4 years of NCAA soccer are at a higher level than the kids that were playing in high level European matches. And if you do think that, why bother with U22 initiative at all? See if he can be baited into saying something about why Voloder and Tzionis don't play.
Voloder had a couple wobbly moments this weekend, but Fontas lives in wobbly momentland. I am not at all sure what the upside of Fontas is at this point. There was a moment, when Rosero was up in the attack and Voloder was caught on the break, when he actually caught a fast player from behind and made a nice saving tackle in the box. His pass completion rate was 87 percent with a healthy 60 completed passes. He was good. I get that Fontas gets Vermes all squidgy, and that he is a sight in possession, but he is not even kind of fast and at the very least, Voloder should be a situational starter for us.
Thinking about this, is it really fair to expect Vermes to succeed with a U-22 program? Maybe if we could get an exemption and make it a U-32 setup that would be okay with him. He'd still struggle, though
True, if the league imposed a U-32 rule, we'd be out four starters. I mean, so would Miami, and their guys are all global legends. Our guys are just old.
Gotta be Tzone Which player will win this award? pic.twitter.com/N0I2ozI3wE— Troll Football (@TrollFootball) March 27, 2024
This feels mean. Between SKC and SKC 2 they have a combined 7 official matches. He's made the bench once this season for SKC. That's it. Can't be bench d'or if you aren't on the bench. I did see a Omonoia FC fan page listed him in their best XI all time recently. The kid can play.
The goals he scored, and overall play, for Cyprus showed that, as well. At this point he has to be one of their best 11. His game against Greece was very good and included one of the biggest goals in their nats history. His play for us last year was good, as well, if not at all what he had been. But he looked like a Joe Lunchbox type of player, which considering his skillset, I'd think makes him valuable. It might be (a might not be) that with the speed of Afrifa, Tzone is seen to have less potential, but right now? It's no contest. With JFR out, I don't get why he's not at least first option off the bench.