Was that the one and only goal the vaunted young DP (heh) Rafael scored against Columbus? At least it was a hell of a goal.
Yeah, the striker who has scored 10 goals in his entire professional career. Clearly a case of DCU misjudging great talent.
That's the thing, there aren't a ton of guys who leave DCU and go someplace else and light it up. The only name ever associated with DCU who left was Eryk Williamson and I am not sure he ever spent much if any time with the first team. Even Lucho with 15th (of 18) placed Atlas only has 2 goals/no assists, 4 yellows and a red this year. That's like his 2017 stat line.
There was the guy that left here and played for the Chilean National Team -- Hernandez, I think. He stunk here.
According to Transfer Market, however much stock you put in that site that was the year of his peak value ... $17M and boy does he wear out a passport his loan from some Uruguayan club to DCU isn't shown here
yep, that's how trolling is done. I am near-violently enraged even though I know you are just saying that to enrage me. Well done, sir.
yeah, that's a weird one. I was happy to see him make a comeback but he was still "not great" for a long time after he left DCU - something, likely non-DCU-related, happened to him and his form went downhill for a while. not this-post-related: It's a bad way to judge things anyway - a) people's view of good/bad at any point in time is very subjective, 2) some players are weirdly motivated by being traded/fired, others need something positive to happen to be re-motivated, can't always point to when exactly they started getting either worse or better.
So that's what ... 1? The number is not going to be much higher. The players we have acquired over the past decade were mostly past their sell by dates, too raw or not enough potential to start with. Could we get 5 guys cut loose in the last decade who were worth the plane ticket out of town? Any that had we kept them, done something else for them turned them into difference makers?
With the qualifying limit of the last decade, yes, this becomes a short list. Players who went on to decent success after DC let them walk...Jakovic and maybe Salihi? And, of course, Long Tan.
Players the team originally picked up outside MLS: Pablo Hernandez. Hamdi Salihi (he scored 96 club goals and 2 national team goals after he left here). Branko Boskovic (though in fairness he retired shortly after he left here). Dejan Jakovic. Wayne Rooney. Luciano Acosta. Lucas Rodriguez (he's not back because his transfer fee was too high). Steve Clark. Charlie Davies (the Olsen doghouse). Christian Fernandez (the Spanish RB we had for half a season and is still carving out a career for himself in Spain). Zoltan Stieber (like Davies, went into the Olsen doghouse).
I'm old and my memory is failing. Why did Charlie Davies and Zoltan Stieber end up in Olsen's doghouse. Both, especially Stieber IIRCA, scored often.
I miss Zoltan and really regret not getting around to wearing a bubble-wrap outfit to a game before he left.
My memory of Stieber is he had a longish run starting and just wasn't producing, so he was benched for Segura(?, maybe, not sure). Davies was a decent player on a bad team, not sure what happened there.
There's a WaPo article where Davies pretty much says his role kept changing that season after DeRo's arrival to where he was pretty much glued to the bench. After his hat trick at Chivas, Davies barely played.
I know Stieber was starting to get phased out after Rooney arrived in 2018 - maybe because he wasn't really defensive minded? He was definitely a big reason the team was able to do any sort of scoring before Rooney arrived. By 2019 he was clearly 4th on the wide midfield pecking order (after Arriola, Rodriguez, and Segura) and just stayed glued to the bench til he left in the summer.
You set a pretty low bar with "Could we get 5 guys cut loose in the last decade who were worth the plane ticket out of town". That was pretty easy to cross, even if you find ways to not rate these players. Also, Pablo Hernandez played four (not one) seasons at Celta Vigo, and has 30 caps for Chile.
I still think the point I am making remains, is that its a short list. There aren't many guys we gave up on who went elsewhere and blew things up. And you're right about Hernandez, I misread the TransferMarket page.
Of that entire group, Hernandez is the most perplexing, but he was here only on loan in a season where Onalfo was fired and Olsen was just installed as coach. Of the others, Salihi is the greatest loss, he still had something in the tank. The rest were meh (Rooney excepted, but I'm including Lucho in the "meh" category as he has had one half really productive season anywhere) or at the end of their careers. (I'll except Clark from this because he was at DCU at the end of a hideous season just to get back on the radar in MLS. He's been "Clarkian" for Portland which means some great plays and some real head scratchers.)