Roster 2023

well i guess there's still an orange team in the world playing kickball and scoring header goals off crosses.

 

So while it is cool to see the Dynamo scouting South America — my impression of the evolution of MLS is that the league has moved on from general South American talent to players proven at the top clubs of South America and South American talent already proven in Europe. But we will see — the team is trying to do something. Maybe it is just my own soccer-fan-trauma colored glasses but it gives me the impression of a team still trying to bargain hunt while the competition shops at Nordstroms.

 

All I can say is I hope so. After watching the World Cup there is still a huge drop off in skill from MLS and European Players. It's like AA vs MBL. Until most of the MLS teams invest in Academy models for developing young players the US as a country is not going to progress much.

 

Minor league baseball has attracted crowds in many cities, primarily because they don't have a team within a few hours drive. Given that top talent is just hours away (flight time that is) I would think that if people wanted to be a part of something they would be forced to turn toward the local club.

Also, I don't get the idea of watching top talent. This is hard for me to put into words but let me try. If the Dynamo were playing Arsenal, it would be obvious. But MLS vs MLS, can one really see the difference? The Texans would destroy any college football team, but watching NCAA vs NCAA, it's just football. Hope that made sense.

 

Look, the World Cup final was amazing! And I know the prize was infinitely bigger, but the MLS Cup final was freaking amazing as well! Good soccer is good soccer.

To quote Celt for the millionth time, "the game sells itself."

 

No, they are just snobs about it. Vast majority of people that turn up their nose at MLS in favor of European leagues have never set foot in a stadium in Europe.

I've always found that annoying. Years ago I bought tickets for a US vs England match at Soldier Field in Chicago. Was right behind the England bench with 2 friends. Behind us were two guys in their early 20s with their girlfriends. The two guys put on annoyingly bad English accents the entire match (I should note I was living in England at the time) and cheered for England over the US. Their girlfriends asked them why they were cheering for England. They said something to the effect of, "because they watched the Premier League and knew all the players whereas they had no real connection to the US team". I was extremely tempted to turn around and say, "How about because you're American, is that connection enough for you? You boys think you're being cool, I live in England and every one of my English friends if they were sitting here would look at you and only see a pathetic tosser." Clearly it is unfair to look at all these "Euro league only" fans as fake fans, but it is difficult for me not to look at them that way.

 

This at least indicates that they're trying to build around Sebas and improve the quality of service he gets. That's a good idea, whether it pans out remains to be seen.

He's not Elis, but he does seem to have a good amount of speed from what I've seen.

It would be nice to get some level of relationship with Libertad that we had with Olimpia. Our scouting still seems so rudimentary to me that we're aided to some extent by outsourcing it.

 

maybe it's something to do with the academy failures where we act like we're looking for diceroll U22s abroad -- something closer to what academies would normally produce themselves -- as opposed to signing surer things abroad. my impression is these days the core of the team is the 3 DPs and the international slots and that core tends to be way too much old fart garbage -- seemingly signed to be the "50 point veterans" but never good enough -- and kids of supposed promise but no proven production in a first team at all. which to me is backsliding from elis, who hadn't done sh*t at monterrey, but had an olimpia history to objectively wager on. and i do agree that even the wagering bit is a cheapness thing, some teams just go sign bale and are done with it. and others while shopping value are signing people who produce in some random league and aren't just prospects.

i still see part of the problem as, flip side, this is not FCD, we have no academy in terms of first team production, and we aren't signing a bunch of kids where we can play the law of averages. we need a wing right now and sign 3 no first team production kids, hoping. they don't pan out. dallas is running through 4 or 5 which is better odds.

that being said the fact that pat had 3 shots at that left wing and couldn't find a soul says he shouldn't be within 100 miles of his job. thiago sucked, beto was out of his depth, and quinones while possessing raw athletic tools has less skill and notion of how to serve sebas than thor does, playing nominally out of position.

but anyhow, if you have just 8 slots spending very many of them on random kids you don't play much is a waste. it's well duh but the whole idea is your DPs better not just start but excel and the 8 slots should be the backbone of the lineup. we have DPs and slots not starting or even effectively on HD2. we are then picking around the 30 year old remainder bin for supporting actors for the ensemble to fill in what the academy and slots (and even DPs, HH) aren't doing. as pasher shows, our USL signing who started is someone else's disposable bench.

 

along those lines did we really just draft a clemson FORWARD (reid) with 3G 0A as a senior and no goals after mid september. pat, how is that getting sebas his service. [he is at least domestic. pierrot is haitian and i am curious if he has a green card or dual nationality where there is a point.]

i get the poijnt to our draft seemed to be converting 1st round slots repeatedly into tools. however prior tool accumulation culminated in artur and tarbell. as with the texans you may think you are clever with all the swapping but after the dust settles it matters what finally shows up. the texans being the team that after tanking and playing pick games, takes stingley and his lis franc who again doesn't finish a football season, when they could have had sauce, who is like an instant all pro and had no injury or performance issues. to me maybe do the obvious thing and prove you can competently do that before we fuss about clever.

 

why is auguste going through waivers and not the draft, and why are we outright signing a UFA to a roster slot without a preseason trial, even a reserve slot, particularly when they are canadian.

 

🚨 Sources: The Houston Dynamo have finalized a deal for Club Liberated Striker Ivan Franco.

All that awaits is putting the pen to the paper 🖊

— MLS Central (@MLSCentralNews) December 20, 2022

the draft day monopoly money harvesting would seem to suggest ivan franco is imminent. one senior cap, modest production (though more oriented to assists than goals), but i assume they're searching for a rapport with sebas. he would need to kick it up a gear or two to be worth it. maybe that's why he's affordable.

Sources : Houston Dynamo and "one other Western Conference club" are extremely interested in Egyptian international attacking midfielder Mohamed Magdy, 8g/4a/26 appearances for Cairo club Al Ahly.

DP deal as Magdy has suitors from European clubs like Celtic as well #HoldItDown pic.twitter.com/AnTV7DWBX8

— Tom Bogert (@tombogert7) December 18, 2022

is the other rumor. for an AM he has geoff cameron/stu holden type "ok" numbers, goals and assists mid single digits. al ahly is a good team regularly in the club world cup. some productivity for egypt in qualifying for AFCON and world cup though he didn't play in actual AFCON or the senegal playoff where they got eliminated from WCQ. he sounds like a DP type. is he productive enough to be worth that. he sounds "ok," when we need "great."

the other concern i would have is with our roster, while i have been begging for assists people, we also need goals while we're at it. they dropped DQ as the other producer. i think that needed to happen but he needs to be replaced by more and not less. sebas is a good technical sniper but how many goals can you get out of 3 moderate assists types and sebas. ideally they'd be a driussi or at least like elis/quioto productive as both scorers and creators, you now, 10G 10A types.

 

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/35304457/nfl-sunday-ticket-headed-youtube-2023-season

so apple did not also get NFL

 

So we traded away the first round for this guy? That about right? I hope he produces. And the news guys enjoy HD2.