He kept us in it until the end. If the media won't give him the props he deserves, I guess we'll have to.
So DC cut Kante? News to me. I was under the impression that MLS didn't sign him 'cause he couldn't get a work visa gast enough...the reason he didn't go to NE until the latter part of the season.
We could have kept the rights to sign Kante after we/MLS failed to sign him pre-season just like we did with Stephen Armstrong. However we renounced all rights to him thus allowing NE to pick him up later in the season without compensating us. Shortsighted on our part.
Good stuff from Bushman.. A few counterpoints though... Ruiz is the MVP, not Twellman.. Ruiz had a staggering 9 game winning goals, including 4 in overtime.. That, my friends, spells MVP to me with all due respect to a player (Twellman) that I had pegged as a damn good player over 5 years ago when he was a freshman at the University of Maryland.. The Diallo trade was made under Clavijo.. Nicol came in after the trade was made.... The Kante situation was very muddled.. As it happened, Kante refused to sign a developmental contract with United which pissed off Hudson and Trask to no end and they released his rights.. By the way, Kante wouldn't have seen a minute of play anyway with Nelsen, Pope and Prideaux available, even with Pope gone for the WC.. I agree the draft was quite useless this season but we still might be able to salvage the Mapp pick and we certainly could have used the #10 pick (Kante) a bit more wisely if the homework would have been done, but with only having about a week to prepare for the draft, I'm not suprised it turned out the way it did...
I really thought the Diallo trade was the first thing Nicol did when he took over in NE. If Bushman was wrong about that, I'll have to make sure to give him grief next time I see him. Was still nice to see SOMEONE give props to Rimando for such a good season!