Roster 2023

shopping list

per usual i would look heavily at dual nationals or players abroad, whose stints didn't go as hoped, or who could use a NT platform. they don't take a slot and their unfashionable form gets you a discount and a motivated player. to me this is a smarter, less crowded place to shop than the openly known MLS FA list of mostly O-30s. past tense players everyone sees coming. or our recent penchant for bad $2m loans from south america that squat a slot or U22 while sucking.

haji wright
mckenzie
EPB***
cannon
fossey
pierie
bello
j. gomez
reynolds***
johnny***
aribiyi
ledezma
llanez***
mendez
rokas pukstas***
duane holmes***
julian green***
patrick koffi
tim tillman (malik's older brother on green's team)
pefok***
hoppe
balogun***
tyler boyd
konrad
sebastian soto***

the ones i prefer***

 

i think Clark is overrated and overpaid, but I wouldn’t focus on changing him out. A backup keeper may be needed as an upgrade to Nelson but you can get those at any time.

 

I just can't stop picturing our man Clark chest passing the ball directly at Jesus Ferreira during the derby match this past season.

 

this is a rebuilding team that ought to be making "5 year decisions." clark was just ok and doesn't help them make the playoffs next season. i would chalk clark, HH, and the others up as we tried to slap together a veteran team to short cut playoffs, and it didn't work. i don't understand dragging this out for years when it didn't work last year. clark isn't cheap and average results for not cheap is goofy. is why we are what we are.

personally, if we aren't going to make an awesome backline, you better have a keeper who can stand on his head. or is that not the message of the last half decade.

also, while in some generic sense you can shop any position any year, i think seanjohn, miller, and hamid is an unusually strong FA class. i think we moved on it a year too early. at some later year clark will wear out -- perhaps even this year, since he was already breaking down in 2022 -- and that year may be less cooperative a free agency class.

 

i also feel like part of your mentality is like this started building someplace and that core should be left intact, when clark is too old to be core for any length, and i saw no real traction at all. the GA is roughly where it was for willis or maric. lost how that makes anyone on this team sacrosanct. 99% of this is a tear down and it doesn't really matter in what order, nor does anything require last in be last out. the more you tear down now the less we have to fart with the next seasons. the better chance anything happens next year.

personally i think we are way too loyal for being this bad. i think the fans and recruits are probably more concerned with do we seem to be trying to win than do we protect fan favorites or expend our contracts. it's a business. NYRB was no nicer or more loyal to pasher than we were. we wringed our hands. they just did what they had to, and they made the playoffs.

i think last year we burned the hot air year where we can sell this as something new with a new owner, vague notions of change, and be fuzzy what we actually do with that. i think in year 2 and beyond people are going to want concrete as faith yet again proved foolish.

more pointedly, for all the self serving chatter about roster spots open they are ignoring that after options last year they made some trades and loans to get to a similar place, but. they had 2 DP to spend. we have traded a million dollar player but thus far haven't talked like the big 4 are expendable. you can quote cap figures all you want but the ~$2-3m number i am hearing is about what a single crappy south american kid's loan fee was last year, and a fraction of what ferreira's fee ($7m) or HH's salary ($4.7m) by themselves were. i think they are twisting fans not realizing what the cost of doing business is anymore. $3m / 10 = $300k apiece. now some of those slots could be entry level reserve deals, but the number i remember was something like 8 senior players. it then matters if, say, you told an expansion team you'd cover half parker for the balance of his deal while they play him.

can we quit pretending we have scads to spend and endless roster space? we have fewer slots than i think we ended up with last year, no DPs, less money to play with. we have some ability to play around but not that great and not that much.

so, we either like setting up a bondage story where we can't move any core players despite core suckage, or some sacred cows become hamburger to empty real roster space, raise real and play money funds, and change the roster who plays the games. at a loss why the general thrust of the team and so many fans is managed incrementalism as though risking more losing years isn't its own huge downside risk. dude was an ok keeper in a series of ok keepers on a losing team. i get the old reflex to protect the core of the playoff teams but we aren't that anymore, this bunch should be completely expendable save perhaps raines.

 

fwiw since i checked the salaries database, HH is $4.7m base $5.2 guaranteed. he's really "5" and not "4."

 

I could with Darwin under the right contract.

 

i had my contract epiphany. when this was great we would have future million dollar earners making $60k entry level reserve deals and prime age 20-somethings making $250k or so who would be league MVP with another team. that's good GM work.

some of y'all instead want to get less and less for a discount for old farts. that's not upside value for morey on the career front end or middle arc, that's downside bad money on the back end of careers.

the last time this was positive we were on the front end of elis and manotas. we didn't get them cameron- or holden-cheap but we got in on the ground floor of a rising star. to be fair, raines could be a start along those lines. more of that, less of this ching/ beasley/ figueroa/ quintero career milking. how many titles do we have off "one more year in the sunshine." or, at this point, even playoffs.

 

i think we need to rewind the tape here, pull receipts, pick your metaphor. i thought maric was mediocre and needed gone. i was pretty clear i thought clark was at best a modest upgrade. i think the mentality of the signing was slap together a few vets for 2022 and gun for barely playoffs. it didn't work. he's 36 and we still suck. he proved a modest upgrade. so we didn't achieve some personnel miracle, he ain't cheap, and we didn't achieve the big picture moonshot either. moonshot being over, why do we need the old man astronaut then.

with a team as bad as we have been you just need to punch as many holes in it as possible. i do beiieve in triage during the season when you only have so much window. but right now it's open season. even under triage principles i don't think old and mediocre is future foundation, not him any more than quintero, fafa, or HH.

if you have to have some sort of core during the transition, pick one of sebas or hadebe, plus raines. build around kids who will be here in 3-5 years and form a winner. the more ageing driftwood you keep now is that many more players to drop some future window to try to make this competitive. why not now. we already suck. yank off the bandaid, ship people out.

the more "useable" security blankets you keep who can "tide us over a few years," the longer this will suck. i think they're fairly sh*t security blankets or we wouldn't be circling the drain. i don't see how this is comforting at all. i'd rather it be volatile or even start out emptied like the early 2010s astros -- but be actually subject to change.

 

little context--insigne makes $14m/yr by himself.

rumor is MLS is a potential Cristiano Ronaldo divorce destination. some think Miami but messi is rumored there, and i think that also might be more awkward for a ManU owner and coach than some think. now we may just be a bidding tool for UCL europe but who knows.

tangential unrelated point -- how is Miami not a United. you can even hear the abbreviations Mia U (sound it out). how do you miss that? the pink is distinctive and miami but who came up with "inter."

 

no one calls miami "inter." it's miami or beckham's team.

miami is the worst attended team in the league, who set up shop where they failed last time, drawing numbers only slightly higher than before, i wouldn't consider it optimized. becks had an option and they let him use it. the fusion made the playoffs 3/4 of their existence and that still didn't hack it.

i always thought of the orange as a nod to the astros and i didn't think it hurt us.

 

that wales game is like the walking talking counterargument on frenetic high press soccer. we ought already have plenty experience watching wins float away in the breeze because our game plan isn't a 90 minute one. no idea why we're copying nonsense.

they were exhausted by halftime and couldn't adjust to an opponent who pushed more bodies downfield.

 

This guy take an international slot?

 

To my knowledge he already has a green card or had one previously. Could be wrong though.

 

is this for HD2 (on loan or direct) or for the senior squad. what i am looking at is someone who fairly centrally will run at people, and either poach goals back door or square the ball from the edge of the 6. i see zero sign of real wing play, it's more like what memo used to do back door when everyone squatted elis and manotas. productivity is crap, 3 goals in what cumulatively is about a season of work across 3 years. cheap salary but he categorizes right now as international and senior. so he costs a slot to play here. which is the last thing a bad team needs is another project in a slot. i don't see him helping the first team much -- though i think he'd be more useful than beto, thiago, or quinones -- but they are about useless so this is a relative comment.

i could see value in a project as a reserve and loan if he was getting a green card, or straight to HD2, but i doubt the meter's been running on a visa/green card with him playing in toronto, which is about 80mi from the border if you tried to commute every day to keep residency, and i'd be curious if he was willing to play along with a second team deal. i also don't know if MLS would let you turn a senior back into a reserve, or if he'd sign a direct to HD2 deal which is about what i see here: project. i can't see how someone who can barely score for a bad TFC team helps us and i don't see where we have such amazing attack players where he could do the quasi-memo forgotten back door runner routine because everyone was so distracted. we kind of need the productive distractions before we worry about wengers and memos poaching.

 

Have to think this is leading to another move. Otherwise, can't figure out why you'd want to have Vera, HH, Artur, Raines and Coco all on the roster. Too much overlap, not enough diversity of role.