And it's about time too. http://soccernet.espn.go.com/headlinenews?id=316465&cc=5901 I think the problem has not only been with the players departing for national team duty leaving the teams hurting, but there has been some players that can perform at the MLS level that haven't gotten the proper opportunity. I think the expansion of the rosters will only help during WCQs and international matches, now that MLS is being considered for the Copa Liberatordes. With all the matches some teams will be playing in the near future, it will be much like Europe, and the teams need to have expanded rosters to accomodate the growth of the sport... Just my two cents.
How did he bend over for Chivas when everyone gets the same rules? More likely, it's an effort to keep the level of play up because adding close to 100 new Americans won't raise the level of play like adding 75 Americans and 25 internationals.
Mods, There's a separate thread on international players already going. Wouldn't it be more convenient to refute all the Chivas paranoiacs at the same time?
Where will all these extra players come from? 10 teams get bigger rosters = 10* 4 = 40 2 new teams get full rosters = 2 * 28 = 56 new players = 40 + 56 = 96. Current players (not counting non-roster injured) = 10 * 24 = 240. 96 new players is a ton for a league that only has 240. Where will be get 37% more players from? Will that lead to a huge drop in quality?
It should only lead to a drop of quality on the far end of the bench. It really doesn't do much to the starting 11s, especially with the increase in SIs. All it does is allow more spots for people to develop as full time professionals and possibly make a jump to being starters that they wouldn't have had if they hadn't been able to even join the team.
Actually, roster expansion should lessen the drop in quality. Here's why: MLS is adding 37% more players to fill 20% more minutes. The salary budget will also go up by much more than 20%, although we haven't heard how much yet. So even if quite a few of the additional players don't pan out, the increase in roster size is part of a strategy to ensure that the bad players don't need to be on the field. We'll only be watching the better ones.
Except that for the first two seasons Chivas and SLC get 5 TI's. 5Ti's and 4 SI's mean 9 mexicans at Chivas for the first two seasons. I'd say this 2 season higher TI rule was created for Chivas.
These players will/should come from: -American Colleges and Universities -The USL Division I and II -CONCACAF leagues and national teams I'd prefer not to see too many old Euro "stars" but we will no doubt get some of them too.
It is definitely a good thing. There are so many quality players out there right now. They just need to be found.
More paranoid nonsense. If you'd read the thread about international players, you'd know that the 1998 expansion teams were also given an increased allocation of foreigners.
I'm not an anti-Chivas paranoid. I'm happy to have them in the league. I'm just saying what this looks like to me.
A good thing to keep in mind is that some MLS players play for foreign national teams but have gotten green cards or US citizenship so they now count as Americans. (As a DCU fan, I know Etcheverry and Reyes were this way. Moreno was supposed to be too.) It takes time for one of these players to become an "American", so the foreigners expansions teams bring it would not qualify immediately. They would not have long time foreign-players who count as americans. Therefore, expansions teams would be at a disadvantage if not for their extra SI slot.
I don't follow. Shouldn't this be the case for any of the teams who have foreigners? Colorado has a bunch of foreign players who may or may not get a green card. You can't say that all foreigners coming to MLS are expected to get green cards and that the two years Chivas has with 5 TI's will allow them to get their green cards and catch up to the league. The one green card player on Colorado, Pedro, had his before coming to the team. Spencer is going home now because he couldn't get one. I don't see why the expansion teams, now or in '98, need extra TI spots.
Have they said how the 4 new spots will be classified? Will it be 2 Senior roster spots and 2 Dev spots or 1 and 3 or all 4 dev spots?
Sorry, I didn't notice who was posting ... I'll take back the paranoid part. Still, it doesn't make sense to say that an advantage was created for Chivas, when in fact it's been weakened from the form in which it existed seven years ago.
Each team can now have 4 SI's. So one of the four new spots is for that SI. Each team can now have 5 TI's. This is a little trickier because in the past the league has 20, so each team had two but I don't know if each team actually had two of these. So technically all four of the new spots are for foreigners, 1 SI and 3 TI's.
Yeah, but that was when the league was brand new and needed to import foreign tallent. Now the league is more mature and producing stars. I think the additional foreign spots is to make Chivas happy and help improve the play on the field by giving teams a larger pool to try and pull players.
... which puts expansion teams at an even bigger disadvantage, especially because the existing teams are allowed to protect 12 players now. In the previous expansion draft, they could only protect 10. Given that other teams have already built up a core of players, it's only natural that the expansion teams should receive additional foreigner slots to help them catch up. It happened last time, it's happening this time, and you can bet it'll happen every time, regardless of where the investors are from.
That's way too logical for MLS to be doing that. I just can't see them expanding the senior roster by 4. They'd have to raise the cap extreamly to do that.
Bonji, I actually think you're probably right that Chivas was somewhere in the league's calculus when they made this decision, but 1. It's still probably the best thing to do to help prevent dilution in the first year or two. 2. It might well still be neutrally applied. 3. Chivas will probably still be poor-to-mediocre in its first season, due to the reasons numerista stated.