Gyasi Zardes - Sentimental clutter is something we're emotionally attached to, that we keep, that no longer has a purpose in our life.
He was better than Miguel Berry. He was better than Erik Hurtado. The club sold him for damn near the same amount as Miguel Berry. If you keep him, it’s at least a one or two point upgrade on our season, we make the playoffs. If you sell him, get considerably more than what you got for Miguel freakin’ Berry, who scored two goals this season. Two. Off the field community stuff, etc. No one said he was great. I know you hated him, even blamed him for missing a shot as he quite literally injured himself, but he was a good dude and a good player. The best American striker in MLS for years. He deserved better than to be sold for a bag of balls and being literally insulted on the way out by his ungrateful, delusional, and ultimately doomed coach, who was looking to blame everyone but himself for the team’s shortcomings. He doesn’t call people homophobic slurs (Cucho), he doesn’t rant on social media that he deserves better (Etienne), his old lady doesn’t bitch about the city (Matan), he doesn’t hint at violence towards fans when they trash him on Twitter for a bad play (Room), he doesn’t openly argue with teammates about who will take a penalty (take your pick). He dies his hair so his granny can see him on TV. He donates toys to kids at the Children’s Hospital. That’s why people like him.
One phrase: salary cap. We likely would not have gotten to keep him and get Cucho. Vis-a-vis Cucho? Same number of goals for both, and Zardes' goals per game was less, so one cannot claim an upgrade on points. And frankly, we got what the market was for both him and Berry. Every player reaches his "sell by" date--and it often doesn't come off well when it happens (mind you, keeping your mouth shut and not insulting an employee who is leaving for whatever reason is HR 101).
I don’t hate him and never said I did, I just countered all the gushing about a guy that was just as likely to injure himself tripping over a shot as he was to score off his knee or face. His work ethic and positioning was how he scored, not his skill. Again, no hate, just didn’t think he was good enough to be our 9.
Zardes is 31. He has plenty of miles left, and he was in the national team picture IN A WORLD CUP YEAR. He’s not going to go somewhere and be second fiddle. The only way he’s coming back here is if whoever the new coach winds up being somehow able to convince him that we’re going to play with two forwards.
Are you talking about Miguel Berry here? Because that is who you just described. A bumbling fool who would be lucky to score a goal. Gyasi Zardes was the top scoring American striker in MLS over (IIRC) four whole seasons with the Crew. Have some respect.
Yes, moving Zardes to get Cucho was probably required, I know. But other things could’ve been done. For example, instead of selling Zardes ($300k GAM) and Berry ($250k GAM) how about just sell Berry, buy down Zardes to TAM level, and sign Cucho? Or buyout Molino? Or buyout Kitchen? Or not sign Room to the largest goalkeeper salary in the league? Or not sign Iggy when you already have Nagbe, Artur, Morris, Zawadzki, and Hairston? Many things could have been done to sign Cucho and get him under the cap. Now, if Zardes is sold for $1 million in GAM, fine, that’s fair. But we sold him for almost the same fee as Miguel ‘two goals the entire season’ Berry. It was mismanagement of an asset, plain and simple. He was benched for no reason, his value depreciated, and we sold him at literally the lowest value possible. And then Porter said he was shit as he walked out the door. Not cool.
I think the answer to why they did it that way is quite simple: They saw signs that Zardes was slowing down, and they overestimated what they had in Berry. Full stop. There's an argument as to whether or not they got the first part wrong. There's not much of an argument about the second part. But since Zardes' contract was over at the end of the season, if there's no plan to stick with him after that, it's still not an unreasonable decision.
No. I’m not a fan of any individual player. Gyasi was demoted to right back by Sigi for a reason. He was out of contract at the end of the year and we needed to move him somewhere, anywhere, to make room for a better, younger striker. It’s not about respect.
Well in that case Alex Matan was the hardest done by any Crew player this season. The most untapped, raw potential on the roster and Porter absolutely abused & disused him. Rabble rabble!
Matan didn't score 54 goals nor prove himself to be a great guy. Business is business but we heart Gyasi.
I'd just like to point out that Gyasi still owns his house here in Westerville. If he were fine taking a backup role, this would likely be an extremely easy and convenient option for him and his family.
And he made Sigi look like a fool by being the top American goalscorer in MLS over the next four years.
I would take him as a reasonably priced backup striker. I figured he’d go home to SoCal, but LAG still have two starting caliber strikers. Maybe LAFC would take him as a backup to Chicho Arango.
It's a lot easier to process stanger's feelings about Gyasi Zardes through the lens of the Gyasi Zardes hype train thread and his general feelings about hangthadj. To wit, take the reaction to the Fire Porter thread, even when it was obvious that the team should move on from Porter, James was unable for the most part to let go that a Fire Porter thread was made before Porter was hired. It was brought up on a near weekly basis after each loss. And with this was came some lecturing about fandom and questioning whether or not the thread started was even a fan of team. The Gyasi Zardes Hype Train thread, a thread about an eminently likeable striker and a good teammate was created by the same poster. This caused the circuit board at the Fan Police Headquarters to short circuit. Virtually everyone posting in that thread recognized Gyasi shortcomings, but celebrated his achievements. For the most part it was genuinely happy place in a sea of negativity that is usually the Crew Big Soccer Board. Almost the "We Rate Dogs" page of Crew fandom in it's positivity. Again this completely turned upside-down the worldview stanger had created. Fandom is inherently irrational. Fans have their favorite players for a variety of reasons. Some may even irrationally like Gyasi for being the third highest goal scorer in club history. Some may thing that for each of his 61 club goals were overshadowed by 31 lucky deflections off his face and 32 injuries sustained tripping over himself while taking a shot. Our fandoms are all made of different memories. And many don't show up in the box score, or the injury report. You'll just have to trust the memory of the story teller. Fandom is irrational. Sometimes you know the exact moment you fell in love with a player or dislike a player. Sometimes you can look at narrative built by an announcer or media about a player that brings him in or out of favor with the fan-base. And sometimes you can just look at years of antagonistic nonsense on a message board and understand that the dislike of certain player has less to do with any actual on field production, or lack their of, than it does of the players standing within members of the fan-base that certain fans don't respect.