This loan move will set his career back a year. I don't understand why he would take this loan move. Did he think he was going to actually be playing with Cruz Azul's first team? In my mind, Villarreal's prospect stock has plummeted in the last year. This loan move certainly didn't help.
I wouldn't. I think he would get some playing time with LA Galaxy this year since Donovan will be away with the National Team for a long time and I would rather have him at LA Galaxy II than Cruz Azul Hidalgo because LA Galaxy has an extra incentive to develop Villarreal that Cruz Azul does not have.
The Galaxy brought in a few new attacking players this year, with Rob Friend, Ishizaki (Swedish international), and some Brazilian guy expected to start, forget his name. Then Zardes and Rogers could improve too. Could be tough for Jose to get PT there.
LAG are struggling to figure out what exactly to do with their youngsters. They lost Arriola due to Bruce telling him he'd be plying his trade in the reserves. Didn't have much of a plan for Villareal and it appears his development could be set back a year. They also don't appear to have much of a plan for McBean, another youth NTer. Their only plan for Zardes was to throw him out of position onto the wing and that was largely possible due to trading Magee for Robbie Rogers who's been injured(terrible move). Yes we now know LAG is setting up an LAGII, but forgive me for not wanting our better youth prospects playing at the poor USL Pro level. That's no way to develop. Why we're not seeing inter-league loans is a great question and that we're not seeing much of them is a problem. I find it tough to blame Villareal for this move if the other option is sitting and watching the best American player ever play your position or playing a rare reserve game until the USL Pro level reserve squad is up and running.
The reported option to buy fee is $1 million, which would mean $750,000 in allocation money. If Cruz Azul doesn't exercise the option to buy, then he'll return in January and the Galaxy will then decide what to do with him. And also for Jose, I'm sure his salary is much higher than his current minimum contract. Landon will play in the MF this season. Cruz Azul certainly has the incentive to develop him if they like what they see and outright purchase his contract and pay the transfer fee. Hopefully he plays well with Hidalgo in the Clausura and gets an opportunity with Cruz Azul when the Apertura starts up.
He is 20 years old, so he isn't really that young. If Cruz Azul doesn't think he is good enough for their club's first team at 20 years old, then they most likely don't have interest in purchasing him. Besides, I think there was a good chance that he would get playing time. The guys that LA Galaxy has brought in this offseason at striker weren't with the team until after Villarreal went out on loan, so they might have been brought because Villarreal was sent out on loan. I'm not so sure that Villarreal would see no playing time with LA Galaxy this season if he was with the team. I'd still rather him play with a team that has a reason to develop him than a team that has no reason to develop him.
I agree with this but really is Villarreal even good enough to take a spot away on another team. He's really a one dimensional player who needs to develop much more. The fact of the matter is that I don't think he's good yet to really be a serviceable player in the MLS. At least with this loan he'll get playing time, based on what I've seen of him (I've watched a lot of his games) I don't think he'd get much more playing time anywhere else in the MLS even if he was loaned. Rogers last season was soooooooo bad so in theory Villarreal should have been able to get some time on the right side but he wasn't even able to get that. I think this move is good for him.
Regarding McBean, he's just not good enough. And wait until the USL Pro level reserve squad is up and running? They have their first of 28 games in a month..
Does anybody know what $1 million gets you in the Mexican transfer market? At the end of this loan, Villareal will be a 21-year-old with 3 goals in 45 American professional appearances and a yet-unknown track record in Mexico. Let's say he scores 10 goals in the second division this year. Is that worth $1 million to a Mexican club? I honestly have no idea. Presumably his Mexican heritage increases his value there somewhat. But it still seems likely that the bar for what he'd have to do to be worth $1 million to CA in a year would be pretty high.
Absolutely! It was always going to be difficult to play for Cruz Azul, in case anyone has not noticed, they are playing good Futbol and currently in first place which hasn't happened for a while. Him being in Ascenso is definitely a step up in development than MLS. He is still young and he will be a better player after this loan wether he stays in Mexico or not. Sometimes you have to step back in order for bigger reward in the future. LAG is the worst at developing players, they are so many talented young players going through their pipeline that they could make a killing by working with them at a lower cost and selling later. Instead they opt to pay a lot of money and their talented young players get ruined.
"Ruined" implies that Villareal would be a much better player and that somehow Galaxy dropped the ball with his development, but I'm not sure that's the case. Villareal simply was not good enough to contribute consistently in MLS. Get used to it, because as development gets better, you're only going to see more and more prospects flame out in a league that's getting tougher to compete in every year (it's rare nowadays, for example, to get a player that is MLS-ready out of college). Any MLS team better than Cruz Azul Hidalgo probably couldn't have used Villareal much, either. But I'd be interested to hear what you'd have done differently.
College is not a developmental league, they don't care if you get better or not, all they care is about winning so of course I don't expect a player coming out of college to be MLS ready. To be honest, if you want to become a better player you don't go to college because it would be a waste of 3-4 years. If you want your education paid for and not interested in a professional soccer career then you go to college. As far as Villareal, going to Mexico was a great idea because any MLS team is not interested in waiting 2-3 years for you to learn and get better. Eventually all these old guys LA has playing for them will cost too much money for what they bring to the table and guess what, all these young guys that they once had are not going to be available. Tijuana will be glad to keep on bringing them in.....Thank you LA!! LAG is the cheapest scout, you find them, TJ hires them and develop them the right way!!!Villareal will eventually end up over there too for free.
I mentioned college because it used to be the main talent pipeline for MLS/USNT. For example, guys like Graham Zusi would get a somewhat stunted development in college and, after years of pro 1st division competition, eventually round into key MLS players or international caliber players by their late 20s and we pretty much had to settle for that. With the development of the academies, at 20, Villareal (or any prospect) should be a finished product and ready for first team minutes. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to reinvest a ton of time into "re-developing" that player, especially if you have good prospects regularly coming thru the pipeline (and LA does, including Villareal's younger bro). Most importantly, JV is not going to go from not making LA's bench to being a starter in LigaMX with "2-3 years" of development given he's already 20.
Not in the squad for the Cup game on Wednesday http://us.soccerway.com/matches/201...rrey/cruz-azul-hidalgo/1618041/?ICID=PL_MS_11
I never want to write these things off prematurely, but if this isn't already a fiasco, it's certainly near that point. Michael Farfan was consigned to coming off of the bench for Cruz Azul's U20s today, and Villarreal still hasn't debuted for Cruz Azul Hidalgo.
Hidalgo plays tomorrow, so hopefully he's at least in the 18. Would be interesting if there's an option to end the loan (by either party) once the summer window opens.
On a day when. Farfan debuted and scored for the first teams, and Baca scored his first goal for the second team, there was also a little good news for Villarreal, as he was given a five minute runout and made his second team debut.
At América's Mexico City rivals Cruz Azul, there is not-so-bright news for Michael Farfan and Jose Villarreal. Farfan has been training with the Philadelphia Union and appears to be on the outside for La Máquina, while Villarreal has not featured or been mentioned in preseason and is not named in the club’s squad list on the Liga MX website. Cruz Azul also no longer own a second-division side, where Villarreal went for parts of last season. http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2014/07/17/american-exports-liga-mx-apertura-kicks-off