The Official Cristian Espinoza thread

There’s still a couple of Don Garber picks as well, aren’t there?

 

Oh for Pete’s sake

 

Man, i loved the Monkees TV series, but I never noticed that closing theme song.

 

Whose bobblehead does the action figure knock over?

 

He certainly deserves better than we've given him.

 

What exactly is Bruce Arena doing...

Earthquakes star Espinoza becomes free agent after option expires: Sources

San Jose Earthquakes star Cristian Espinoza is out of contract this winter and will enter free agency after his 2026 contract option wasn’t picked up before its deadline expired, sources briefed on the situation told The Athletic.

Espinoza prefers to stay in MLS, and San Jose has offered him a new contract, but he is also open to options abroad, sources added. He will be one of the premier free agents on the market in MLS this winter, if not the top option.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/MLS/comments/1ovf6go/earthquakes_star_espinoza_becomes_free_agent/

 

I'm betting Cristian Espinoza will go either to Atlanta and play for Tata Martino or Miami and relplace one of the three aging players that are departing.

 

I think he would take a big pay cut / non-DP contract to play with Messi in Miami. To play with your idol / countryman on a championship level team in a new stadium? You betcha.

 

Still wondering if Bruce didn’t grossly miscalculate, and think that this would be a routine adjustment in Espinoza’s contract to save a little $, because surely Espinoza is committed to and happy in SJ. And then, boom! Cristian was not having it. That would be a screw-up of epic proportions because we’re not only losing a great player and club legend and leader, we’re getting zilch for losing him.

 

Not picking up Josef Martinez and Cristian Espinoza's options, and losing them both for zero return when they would both have quite a bit of trade value around MLS where they both want to stay, is soccer malpractice and everyone involved should be fired. And that holds true even if they're both replaced with Messi caliber players. Which given the history of this team, seems unlikely.

 

100%

 

How do we really know that Espinoza and Martinez really want to stay here?

Honestly, which star or even good player on the other side of 30, would really want to knowing this is a perennial losing club?

 

It’s not really their call if we have the contract option. Sure we could be “nice guys” and let them go if they want out but you can say, yeah we wanna keep you, we’re gonna sign you in case finding another club doesn’t work out and we’ll cooperate in terms of helping you find a new club. That way we don’t set millions of dollars and trade value in fire.

 

Humphrey Bogert, on his pod with his bald sidekick, implied that the Quakes just blew it and missed the deadline to pick up his option (last summer sometime). Oddly enough he doesn't speculate that we could have wanted to try to nickel and dime him and lower his number, and/or sign him to a new contract that extends out a few more years.

If he's right that we just blew it, fire Bruce, and CL. If he wanted to low ball him, well fire Bruce and CL for that too.

 

Yeah, if they lead with "well you're getting older and we therefore expect your productivity to go down" they're looking at a lawsuit, for one.