Let The Off Season Begin
Well it is either down to delayed flights, hangovers or sleeping in. In any case only about three hours late Major League Soccer has announced Monday evening the list of protected players for the upcoming Expansion Draft for newcomers Vancouver Whitecaps and Portland Timbers.
First, as a reminder, here are the provisional rules as best as I can interpret them.
- TFC and all other MLS clubs get to protect eleven players
- Each expansion club picks 10 players each
- Neither TFC or any other club can lose more than two players
- When a club loses a player they get to add one more player to their protected list
- A designated player with a no-trade clause must be protected. If a DP does not have a no trade clause in his deal he can theoretically be left exposed if the club chooses to do so
- Protecting a player does not obligate a team to exercise a contract option, contracts can be renegotiated irrespective of if the player is protected or not
- Generation Adidas and homegrown players are exempt from the draft
- Each club has to protect a minimum of three international players. For TFC that means players born outside of North America. American players are not considered internationals for TFC, but not the other way around
Here is the total list of players that are available to be plucked off TFC’s roster
- Chad Barrett
- Julian de Guzman
- Gabe Gala
- Nick Garcia
- Raivis Hscanovics
- Fuad, Ibrahim
- Milos Kocic
- Mista
- Amadou Sanyang
- Martin Saric
- Maxim Usanov
- O’Brian White
So here is the protected eleven.
- Nana Attakora
- Adrian Cann
- Jon Conway
- Dwayne De Rosario
- Stefan Frei
- Dan Gargan
- Emmanuel Gomez
- Ty Harden
- Nick LaBrocca
- Jacob Peterson
- Maicon Santos
The only two names on the unprotected list to me that are somewhat surprising are Chad Barrett and Milos Kocic. Barrett is on a relatively crazy wage packet by MLS standards and I guess the gamble Cochrane is taking is that no one will want to commit that much money to a player that with due respect to him has not delivered value for money.. Still he might be an interesting ick for a new club depending on how they plan to play. Kocic I thought would be definitely protected and perhaps he may be slid onto the protected list if TFC loses a player in the first round on Wednesday. If TFC loses one player early they get to add one additional player for the second round.
Back in October I blogged that I thought that Martin Saric was most likely the player that TFC might lose considering his relatively low wage of $90,000 and that his style of play might be atractive for a first year MLS club, particularly Portland. Kocic is a great young goal tending prospect that I would not be surprised that a club like Vancouver might take a flyer on, but I am still sticking with Saric as my best bet for someone getting plucked of fthe TFC roster.
The story in the mainstream Toronto sports media tomorrow likely to earn headlines will be Julian de Guzman being left unprotected, and to a lesser extent, Chad Barrett. On JDG’s wage of $1.7 milion there is no way in hell he is going anywhere, at least not in the Expansion Draft, and ditto of course for Barrett.
The other story is who is on the TFC protected list that is currently not under contract. Nana Attakora , Dan Gargan and Adrian Cann are definitely out of contract. Maicon Santos’s loan deal/rights are expiring and his deal will have to be renegotiated if he is going to stay. I have not been able to find out the status of contracts for Ty Harden, Jacob Peterson and Nick LaBrocca. They might or might not be on deals that run into the 2011 season. Only three of the players on the protected list are definitely under contract as of today. In any case it is definitely a statement of intent that the “rebuild” may not be as extensive as many of us might have thought.
Wednesday will be the official start of the rebuild of Toronto FC. Later this week I will be blogging about this draft along with the news coming soon when TFC will start announcing which players are not coming back definiterly in 2011 and who will be availale in the re-entry draft.
Comments are always welcome and of course always appreciated.
Keepers are never taken in expansion drafts, there are so many available that they wont even look at Kocic. Sietz & Onstad are available and wont be taken…
Ibrahim may be the one taken, he has graduated GA but still has an U20 US tag next to his name and could be a sexy pickup for someone.
Saric didn’t play enough to have anyone interested in him.
i’m putting it up that onstad will go to vancouver and barrett is going to portland. onstad is the oldest player in the MLS right now, but at his price tag, he’s also the best value for experience and is no slouch between the pipes. bring him in (as a vancouver native) and you’re going to have a hometown boy with a wealth of experience who’ll be to be able to organize any back line you stick in front of him. he’s got another great 2 years in him at least, after that you have a goalkeeping coach.
barrett on there is still a head-scratcher and we’re going to get burned as a result. he finds his form when he’s got someone to play off of. you need that creative element that he can play off of (that was santos this year), the pinball clemens to his doug flutey if you will, and he’ll produce goals where you don’t think they’re possible. not to mention that his family is in san diego which is a straight shot down the coast from portland if i can remember right.
Barrett is from Portland, only born in San Diego. He loves Toronto but he’s a Northwest boy through and through. Watch out if Portland takes him!!
While I admire Chad Barrett’s hustle, 300K for hustle is just too expensive in this league. You can buy a lot of usable MLS parts with that kind of money. For that reason alone, I think Barrett may be left untouched tomorrow. While yes, he is a Portland boy – will Timbers want to hamstring their first-year salary cap with a striker who, if we are honest, has only proved he should be MLS bench strength?
As far as JDG goes, we must assume TFC informed him that he would be unprotected as they feel neither club will draft a DP. Vancouver strikes me as an organization who would pick their own DP, and not take Toronto’s. Although with the Cochrane/Brennan Show looking increasingly entrenched by the day – who knows? Either way, I’d feel a lot better if our new GM was making these choices… but perhaps he already is.
Saric cleared waivers, along with Mista, Hiscanovics, Usanov, and Gala, and then they all got released. None of these guys will be in MLS next season.