Rumours of a Midfield shuffle...
So Veron is close to signing, and Gomez and DC are far apart in contract negotiations. Both Goff and Spanish language news sources report that Veron will sign for United The latter actually says that Veron "would be preparing his suitcases to join DC United in the United States" and more importantly, that the player has applied for a visa to come up north.
By some curious flow of events, Greg Baum in the Australian The Aget writes today How Victory bungled Fred deal, and drops a ton of gems for us to pick up and marvel at:
Sources close to Fred say he chose not even to look at what would obviously have been a lucrative offer from American club DC United when it arrived two days before the grand final, but asked instead for an upgrade of his terms with Victory.
Even more telling is that the difference between bringing him stateside might have been as little as $40k, or in MLS parlance approximately 3 Justin Mooses. Fred even considered playing for the Socceroos, thanks to fast tracking citizenship for elite athletes.
If you've stuck this far, you may be wondering where this post is headed. Let's see if I can tie this together. We've been speculating who would stay and go in the off season. Now, Gomez appears to be the odd man out, Moreno is likely to stay, and Veron should be training at the RFK Auxiliary fields come February. On the field, Soehn might experiment with Fred playing a more prominent role in the attack, along with Veron. It could be a worthwhile experiment at the beginning of the season.
A straight up Veron (400k) for Gomez (227k) swap, nets a Salary Cap increase of 173k. Just under D's estimated 200k that the team needs to trim. United still must renegotiate Moreno's salary down, maybe pad it with performance related incentives where PKs count 1/2 as much as goals in the run of plan.
The salary cap situation for United is still very tight. If the team is indeed looking to sign another defender and another forward, expect more player moves in the off-season, and not of the developmental player variety.
Labels: Christian Gomez, Juan Sebastian Veron, Roster Moves
posted by Oscar M. @ 11:34 AM
6 Comments:
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Its gonna be tough to see Gomito go. He has been terrific with United. Fred is a decent player, but not nearly good enough to be our number 10. I actually think Moreno is a better option to drop back at that position, as he has played well there throughout the years when he was called upon to play that position. Veron is clearly our most important and biggest signing since Etcheverry. Etcheverry was once South American player of the year, something Veron cannot claim I believe, so it is certainly at least debatable which player represents the biggest signing in team history. Given Veron's long successful European career, however, I think he gets the nod. For that fact alone, next year should be the most exciting, anticipated season in team history...
Nick, agreed that Veron is a huge signing. One nit, I'm pretty sure Etch never won SA player of the year. He came in 2nd to Valderama once.
Oscar,
You're right, that was Pibe that won it in 93, not Etch. And Rai won in 92. Probably should have been Etch that year though, as he was the most dominant player in WCQs. Rai did most of his damage with Sao Paulo and not the national team, if I'm not mistaken.
Ronaldo gets moral support at soccer Club World Cup,
visit:
http://www.soccerfairy.com/ronaldo-gets-moral-support-
at-soccer-club-world-cup.html
and
Verbeek wants Viduka to play on for Socceroos, read at:
http://www.soccerfairy.com/verbeek-wants-viduka-to-play
-on-for-socceroos.html
and
Big Phil drops Portugal contract hint, Read this article
at:
http://www.soccerfairy.com/big-phil-drops-portugal-
contract-hint.html
I heard Jaime is going to Qatar. They offered him $1 million nad FO did not counter (some pissed off people in the locker room about that). Jaime gone opens up some salary cap.
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