With DC United's loan/signing of Eliseo Quintanilla, it seems that MLS is getting very successful at grabbing the top talent in Central America. Consider some recent signings: Carlos Ruiz, Fredy Garcia, Joselito Vaca, and Quintanilla. Sure the list might not be long, but these are young national team players, and MLS has only 10 teams. This is the direction to go for MLS and I am so happy that the league's brass has realized this. MLS has also snagged some good young internationals like Dwayne De Rosario and Winston Griffiths, and while these two might not be world beaters, they are some of the region's better players. Does any other league in CONCACAF have the type of youth internationals MLS has? Add in the US players (Donovan, Beasley, Wolff, Convey, Quaranta, Twellman, etc) and MLS has more than their share of rising stars. I believe Donovan, Convey, Beasley, and Vaca were all in World Soccer's Top 100 Rising Stars issue a year back. MLS is no longer the league of aging stars, it has some young ones too!
Milton Reyes of Honduras and DC United is no young rookie, but he's another top flight Central American playing here.
"Vaca is not from Central America." Whoops! I knew my failures in geography would come back to haunt me!
And staying with the Crew, don't forget Guatemalan international midfielder Freddy Garcia, whose signing was announced earlier this week. And he even has a green card, which is an even added bonus to the club. Garcia is only 25, incidentally. Cheers, William
It's not just the brass...it's those players...they know that the majority of Euro teams aren't scouting Central America....but they take vacations and do training the the US. It's where you go to get seen so you can jump to Europe.
I would like to see this trend continue. It's good for the league and it's good for the concacaf region. As the league expands in the next decade I would like to see the foreigner rule change to something like the leagues in the EU do. Say something like a team can have up to 5 players from concacaf and only 1 or 2 from anywhere else. Having the goal of being the top league in our region is a good target for MLS. Z
I completely agree that MLS has improved dramatically by moving away from EuroDinos to young Central and South Americans. Much, much better idea, both from the quality of play and damage to the budget. Plus, as pointed out, it is an excellent springboard for these players. A win/win situation. Now if the Revs could get a couple of these guys. Oh yeah, I forgot, we had Andy Williams. Grumble, grumble..... JIM DOW
I'm all for the league operating as a clearing house for talent from our region. There is a great deal of cheap talent out there that the league can use to augment the growing US talent base. But this should not be seen as something that is new for the league. MLS has been making signings like these going back all the way to 1996. Early league signees from around the region were Carlos Rodas and Martin Machon (Guatemala), Ronald Cerritos and Jorge Rodriguez (ES), Evans Wise and Andy Williams (Jamaica), Ezra Hendrickson (St. Vincent), Juan Pablo Rodriguez (Mexico, a player who ultimately failed his physical and was sent back, but who signed with the Clash at age 18). From South America, we also got a pretty good sized group of younger up-and-coming national team players. Unfortunately most of them didn't fare well here.
I have the same concern, but if the Concacaf spots increase from 3 to 4, that is less of a risk. In addtion, with the restrictions on SIs & TIs on each teams roster, the fact that all the Is are not coming from the same country, and that it is the USA players who make the majority of the MLS rosters, I think MLS development of a deep pool of potenial US Nats will out pace the development of potential CONCACAF rivals.
I'd like to believe MLS was a euro-cradle or garaunteed recognition from Nat coaches, but I've noticed that once a player's been here a while, he stops getting looks, ie:Cerritos, Moreno, Etchescary, Williams, Trotman(rip), & even Stern John were all first teamers that succeeded here, but got little attention from their domestic coaches upon rtn 2 camp. Stern went to nottingham & was tearing up d1 but got benched because if he scored more gols, they would've owed him more loot. That's just sorry. That new dc player has an impressive resume, but who's he going to beat out for pt? There are just to few teams in the MLS.
Gardner must like it also. A bunch of players who haven't been developed by (his view) stultifying English coaching. Actually, there's some truth to this. The injection of Central and South American players into our league brings an interesting cultural melding to our North American game. Kind of matches what's happening in the general population. I was going to write something about it being better than being a league where European players come to retire, except my guess is that some of our young players have been really helped by having some Euro veterans take them under their wings--Chicago being an example.
Cerritos is STILL a first-team regular for El Salvador. So is Andy Williams for Jamaica. Stern John never dropped out of the national team picture. It's just that El Salvador didn't play anything meaningful while the Hex was going on...
MLS has also helped certain players get a shot at their national team. When Craig Ziadie (sp?) was playing well for DC United last year he declined a call-up from the Jamaican NT because he hopes to play for the US one day. Similarly, when Wolde Harris was tearing up the league two years ago (unbelievable, isn't it?) he was called up to the Jamaican NT and scored for them in a qualifier IIRC.
Sorry if someone else has already brought this up, but let's point out one other major reason why we're seeing these players in MLS: they're cheap. Cheap compared with young European talent, that is.
A player you didn't mention is Salvadoran Marvin Quijano, who received a callup to ES's full squad despite limited playing time with the Galaxy. He declined as well. The league still does need to gain credibility in a number of places, though. The South Americans still often look down on MLS success, ignoring the good play of Diego Serna, Moreno, Graziani and the like here. So we still have to work on them. But as with many other things, this is only a matter of time. They will recognize MLS's value when they can no longer ignore our success stories.
Scoring a goal every 140 minutes in MLS play not MLS caliber? Yes, it's been two and a half seasons since he's played in the league (MLS is much better compared to 1999), but he is not Chris Albright. He should never have been let go by the league, but then he would not have played well in Portugal, which means he would not have played for Liberia, scoring two in WCQ, which just missed out at a spot in the WC Finals. Musa Shannon and Tenywa Bonseu are the types of players MLS needs. Good young African talent. Throw more Central and South Americans and MLS is on the right track.
bringing this post back into discussion (oldies but goodie) what are your take on this post? as for me, I am not experienced enough to discuss this.