In reading the "Nowak arrives, Etcheverry Is All But Gone" thread over on the DC Board, the word is that DC would recieve a major allocation for the departure of Marco Etcheverry. However, he is currently out of contract. Goff reports this in his column; I would post the link, but I don't know how to do that. Previously, it had been reported that if Bocanegra leaves Chicago that no allocation would be given to the Fire; The reasoning being that he is out of contract, and no transfer fee would be paid to MLS. My understanding is that a team recieves an allocation ONLY if a player is sold. [Howard, Stern John, et. al] Historically, players that left MLS but were not sold did not yield a team an allocation. [Campos, Kosecki, Podrozny, et. al] Two Questions: 1. Am I correct in my understanding about the allocation process? [Transfer fee = allocation; No Transfer Fee = no allocation] 2. Would both clubs recieve an allocation, neither club, or only one of the two recieve an allocation for the players in question? [Bocanegra/Etheverry] Cheers!
Allocations are actually decided on an ad hoc basis by the competition committee. An example of an allocation for a player who wasn't sold is the one Colorado got for Valderrama. http://www.mlsnet.com/about/regulations/ There's no specific rule for deciding allocations so your second question doesn't have an answer. The competition committee has discretion there.
I'm pretty sure the Fire would receive an allocation for Bocanegra. We got one when Razov left. Other teams have also got allocations when their players went overseas once out of contract.
Knave, thanks for the information. But certainly if Etcheverry [who has been fairly terribly since ~2000] is "worth" an allocation upon departure, certainly Bocanegra would be worth one [Or more] as well... Of course, if Etcheverry is "worth" an allocation, then by this fuzzy logic, Howard may be worth two or more!
There was some discussion the Etcheverry allocation was going to Dallas for the Adu pick. Dallas is getting an Allocation for the Adu pick, but who knows if it is the Etcheverry allocation or not.
What other allocation might DC have if not this one? Columbus got the "you suck" allocation for the East this year. This could be a way of making DC "give up" something for Adu, without actually having to give up anything. Sort of like the Eddie "two allocations" Lewis situation when he went to Fulham. One of the allocations was traded to Chicago for a low draft pick, so that Chicago could use the allocation for Hristo Stoitchkov. The other one San Jose got to keep and use. You can't objectively say that Lewis is/was twice the player any of the other single-allocation players were, but if MLS wants to make in convenient for something to happen, nothing will stop them. In the Lewis case, it was the only way to get Stoitch into the league. In the Adu case, giving Dallas an allocation for Etcheverry is a pretty harmless way of making sure Adu plays in DC. Tom