The final rosters are due today. It's going to be interesting to see who will make the squad. It's also going to be interesting to see how many players we are going to have on it and who we are going to wait on. In other news, former MetroStar Peter Vermes, who IMO made the best goal ever in a shootout back in 96 as he hobbled to score the goal, retired today.
Vermes was one of my all time favorite players, captain of our Metro always gave 110% . So I guess no farewell match then in his honor. To bad him and the likes of him do not get picked up by one of the A-league teams, as is tradition in many european countries.
From what I've seen of Vermes (mostly with KC Wizards) he was a solid back who did his job well. I've also heard he is way into health and nutrition and is always in match form. I'm sure an A-League team would benefit from his services, but maybe he doesn't want to go that route....
It's probably a misnomer to call them "final" rosters. It's probably more accurate to say that it means you need to submit an 18-man roster (with the 6 developmental slots) that is cap compliant. You can obviously add, trade, cut players as the season progresses. However, since it takes approximately 6 weeks for a work permit to be processed, realistically, an SI added at this date would miss the first couple weeks of the season (unless they already had a work permit for the USA).
Actually, SA MLS Confidential says that MLS is negotiating with Krassimir Balankov of Stuttgart and Bulgaria. He's 37. He makes big money so I'd guess (only guessing) that only teams that have allocations (to get cap relief) or can afford $200-$270K in salary could afford him. That would be y'all.
Correct. WC "94--Stoichkov et. al. The story is this is his last year with Stuttgart, they have offered him a frontoffice position but he may be interested in playing another couple of years (or at least one more year) and thus take a substantially reduced salary (MLS Max is way below what he currently makes) to play one more season. I haven't seen this story mentioned anywhere other than (a) MLS Confidential and (b) BS Boards so who knows how close to an agreement they are.