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| A statement on one team I follow... |
“If you take the best part of Europe and the best part of North America, you’re arriving in Montreal.”
- Thierry Henry
I think I spoke my little piece about Henry coming to coach L’Impact Montreal (wait, see, and hope for the best), but the man knows how to work a crowd. For what it’s worth, seeing Montreal pick up Ignacio Piatti’s option for another year, at age 35 (come April) and after he limped all the way through 2019.
That, of course, was one of hundreds, even millions of moves in a week that started with the Expansion Draft and ended with roster deadline day. Teams across Major League Soccer protected the players they wanted to keep and sent the rest out to play in the rain for a while where strangers can line up to gawk at them, maybe even make an indecent proposal or two. Some trades went on under all that, and some players stepped into the square work-force (aka, retired). I’ll touch on some big picture stuff at the end – e.g., notes on the first drafts turned in by Nashville SC and Inter Miami CF, then some stray notes about the house-cleaning, etc. – but the balance of this will talk about the two teams I follow, FC Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers. I’m going to start with Portland, because the tea leaves around Cincinnati all over the goddamn place, even outside the damn tea cup.
Before getting to that, I want to restate/rename a personal rule that I try to follow when new players come into a team: you cannot know how well or poorly any new player will do in MLS until they do it, and that’s regardless of how much your team paid for the player, or where that player was before. I hereby rename this the "Brian Fernandez Rule." Got it? Good. Time to dig in.
Timbers: Special Friends, Coming and Going
First, the Timbers signed a 27-year-old Croatian centerback named Dario Zuparic, and they might sign a 20-year-old Venezuelan right back named Pablo Bonilla. I predict neither success nor failure for either player (two Brian Fernandezes), but I will say that I expect more of Zuparic. He’s actually signed, obviously, but Portland needs either stability or an upgrade at his position (please?) and it’s always encouraging to see a steady history of deployment (e.g., 88 starts, 97 appearances, out of ~152+ games for Pescara). If the Timbers do sign Bonilla, I’d set expectations to emotional self-preservation – especially for 2020 – because the youth revolution rolls slowly in Portland. Still, he’d fulfill a need as well…let the mourning begin…
- Thierry Henry
I think I spoke my little piece about Henry coming to coach L’Impact Montreal (wait, see, and hope for the best), but the man knows how to work a crowd. For what it’s worth, seeing Montreal pick up Ignacio Piatti’s option for another year, at age 35 (come April) and after he limped all the way through 2019.
That, of course, was one of hundreds, even millions of moves in a week that started with the Expansion Draft and ended with roster deadline day. Teams across Major League Soccer protected the players they wanted to keep and sent the rest out to play in the rain for a while where strangers can line up to gawk at them, maybe even make an indecent proposal or two. Some trades went on under all that, and some players stepped into the square work-force (aka, retired). I’ll touch on some big picture stuff at the end – e.g., notes on the first drafts turned in by Nashville SC and Inter Miami CF, then some stray notes about the house-cleaning, etc. – but the balance of this will talk about the two teams I follow, FC Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers. I’m going to start with Portland, because the tea leaves around Cincinnati all over the goddamn place, even outside the damn tea cup.
Before getting to that, I want to restate/rename a personal rule that I try to follow when new players come into a team: you cannot know how well or poorly any new player will do in MLS until they do it, and that’s regardless of how much your team paid for the player, or where that player was before. I hereby rename this the "Brian Fernandez Rule." Got it? Good. Time to dig in.
Timbers: Special Friends, Coming and Going
First, the Timbers signed a 27-year-old Croatian centerback named Dario Zuparic, and they might sign a 20-year-old Venezuelan right back named Pablo Bonilla. I predict neither success nor failure for either player (two Brian Fernandezes), but I will say that I expect more of Zuparic. He’s actually signed, obviously, but Portland needs either stability or an upgrade at his position (please?) and it’s always encouraging to see a steady history of deployment (e.g., 88 starts, 97 appearances, out of ~152+ games for Pescara). If the Timbers do sign Bonilla, I’d set expectations to emotional self-preservation – especially for 2020 – because the youth revolution rolls slowly in Portland. Still, he’d fulfill a need as well…let the mourning begin…
