This is really bad form, that Espinoza is leaving without even having a place to go. That tells me that Quakes basically said, take it or leave it. Not that Bruce was making good use of Espinoza anyway. Kind of ironic they gave out that Espinoza action figure probably around the same time they were trying to lowball him… Hey, we got you an action figure! That’s better than money!
I think Espinoza has a place to go. That's why he's announcing that he's leaving. I think it's customary (and good form) for players to announce they're leaving their old club before it's announced that they've signed with a new club.
I think it is, or if it’s not “the usual” it’s good form, and I wouldn’t expect anything but good form from Espinoza, a class act. But regardless why would you announce you’re leaving a team before you have a deal to go somewhere else? It was known that the Quakes were in continuing negotiations with him.
Nashville it is... This blows. Apparently, Portland & Lafc pushed to sign him also but he chose Nashville. I'm sure Espi thought it wouldn't look good going to one of our fiercest rivals after becoming one of our best players in Quakes history. Good on him at least. 2008901898951164221 is not a valid tweet id
If we lost Espinoza because we wanted to nickel and dime his contract, nice piece of work there. He was at about $2M and probably thru a bidding war wound up at $2.5-3M, an offer we had a chance to match I presume. Great job everyone.
F! Not that we didn’t know this was coming, but at least he won’t play us three or four times a year.
Matt Doyle on BlueSky posted about how Portland just lost David Ayala to Miami (or about to) for $2M cash trade, and I asked him how the Quakes managed to get nothing for Espinoza. He said because Chris Leitch is incompetent and got fired for it. I asked if he had evidence of that or conjecture and he hasn't responded. My guess is that he's using circumstantial evidence and not real evidence. I would be hesitant to jump to conclusions until we really know what happened.
I'd be shocked if we ever get a real answer from the Quakes. They'll probably spin it into some BS. As much as I think Doyle is a shill for MLS, this time I believe him more than usual. Letting go of our best player for nothing and shortly thereafter Leitch is gone I think speaks volumes. Also, wasn't you Jazzy and a couple others on here saying roughly the same thing? He screwed up bad and got canned.
CL had a rep for knowing all of the rules. Which suggests that either it wasn’t his fault, or that it was his fault deliberately. If he signs on with Nashville that will be a sign. And I could see CL screwing up intentionally, after essentially being thrown under the bus for Arena. Arena is the GM isn’t it his job to take care of this stuff? It would be shifty of CL to have deliberately screwed this up, but not out of the question. Go Quakesfans!!
I've been listing the possibilities about what happened w/o committing to any because none of us really know - and certainly the "Leitch screwed up" narrative is a possibility. But I also think they might have wanted to nickel and dime his contract down. That's a pretty common thing to do with options. Yeah, we want you back, but let's talk about terms, and maybe you extend the contract but for a little lower number because the player is getting up in years. The thing is, if it was just a mistake, why didn't they just renegotiate in good faith? We know Espinoza liked playing / livng in San Jose. IIRC, Espinoza sort of announced he was leaving weeks ago. That gives a little more credibility to the "nickel and dime" narrative, where he just got pissed about it and said "I'm out". Leitch's termination seems to fit the "screwed up" narrative on the surface but it also could be unrelated to anything about Espinoza. Bruce came in to the team late in 2024 and probably needed someone around who knows the ropes. But after a year I could easily see where he was ready for a change.
Yeah, this is all speculation. We might find out, and we might not. Was it CL who screwed up? Did he do so deliberately? We may never know. Whatever, we screwed up big time here. Go Quakesfans!!
I put the “deliberately sabotaged” at pretty low probability . Doesn’t seem like a great career move. But I still think “renegotiate / extend at lower number” is a reasonable possibility. If that was the strategy obviously it failed massively.
Certainly a higher probability. However, CL is supposed to know all of the ins-and-outs of MLS rules. That’s supposed to be his long suit. So the chance of CL accidentally messing this up is low. Maybe it wasn’t CL’s responsibility? Or maybe the club wanted to nickle and dime Cristian. It didn’t work out no matter who handled the negotiations, and CL got fired for some other reason? Or maybe we’re just kicking the dog here? We haven’t blown player transactions in this fashion (Cristian & Josef) since CL has been in the GM seat. So what happened here, and who’s to blame, and why? CL’s next job might shed some light on this. In the meantime, I’m blaming Bruce, or maybe RottenFish. Go Quakesfans!!
The Josef thing was definitely a Bruce decision. He makes the calls on the roster. Leitch was just there to help execute them. Josef was listed in the postseason roster decisions as "will not exercise option". So we let Josef go for 0 compensation, when we could have exercised his option and then transferred or traded him (he's going to Tijuana BTW). Same deal with Espinoza. So that doesn't prove that the Espinoza thing was a deliberate "nickel and dime" thing and not a mistake but it informs the conversation, because the pattern of letting a player go for free is the same.
Yeah, if they missed the deadline on Espinoza I'm not even sure that's all Leitch's fault. Bruce is the Sporting Director. He can't tell Leitch, hey, Espinoza's option deadline is coming up, let's make sure we exercise it. We don't know how the responsibilities are divied up. And presumably CL worked for Bruce, and therefore the buck stops with him, right?
It doesn’t matter how you slice it, and who you blame, the net effect is that we have literally cut away 80-90% of our offense, with no apparent replacements. Who will Bruce entice away from New England now?
As I've said before I think he may be working on trying to get Carles Gil. Just a guess. He could be available because he's getting up there in age and New England may be looking to rebuild. He's the kind of #10 that Bruce likes. Kind of safe and measured - smart play, consistent but nothing necessarily spectacular.
100% blame on Leitch and Arena, don't care how that's divvied up between the two... 0% blame on Espinoza, wouldn't have held it against him even if he went to one of our worst enemies, dude was a legend here, he did his part and got little support from the front office putting a winning roster around him. Same as Wondo, some things never change around here it seems... Jackson Yueill and Tanner Beason come on down
I never root against the Quakes or boo the players, but i wouldn't mind Christian bagging a couple goals against us when Nashville visits in Oct , as long as the Quakes win the game, however by October we will probably competing for the wooden spoon.