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Red Bulls Update: Osorio says Vargas not a target, Freeman out 4-6 weeks

Red Bulls head coach Juan Carlos Osorio sang the praises of Venezuelan midfielder Ronald Vargas, calling him an excellent player, but Osorio made it clear that Vargas is not a target of the Red Bulls.

"He is a very good player but he is not someone we can afford," Osorio said at Red Bulls media day on Tuesday. "Not with teams in Europe and Argentina getting ready to make big offers for him."

Osorio admitted to having seen Vargas play during a recent trip to South America, but Vargas was not the player he was at the game to watch.

"I saw him he is not the player I was there to see," said Osorio, who would not reveal his actual target.

Osorio stuck to his statements from February that he and the Red Bulls plan on adding one or two players before the end of the current MLS transfer window. Osorio described the three players he is targeting as a left-sided midfielder, a defensive midfielder and a left-footed central defender.

Osorio also stated that one of his targets is a European-based player who the club could wait until the summer transfer window to acquire.

Freeman out 4-6 weeks with ankle injury

Red Bulls defender Hunter Freeman will miss four to six weeks of action after suffering strain ligaments in his right ankle during the U.S. Under-23 national team’s Olympic Qualifying final against Honduras on Sunday.

Comments

  1. Mark:

    We are in agreement. I wasn’t suggesting JCO be fired in less than a year. I was just wanting to know why it was alright for Arena, but not for JCO.

    Reply
  2. Brett – I stick by my comment. I didn’t say he hurt his value but that he didn’t do much – if anything – to help it. Strikers are paid to score goals.

    Not that RB would do anything useful with their chunk of his transfer value anyway.

    Reply
  3. Aristotle:

    The team simply can’t start from scratch every year. I’m not a huge Bruce Arena fan, but they should have given him more time to build the team. Of course that’s a moot point, so now they need to give JCO more time to build the team. There are always exceptions(his wife may miss Chicago, he proves to be utterly incompetant), but then we’ll be setup for failure yet again in 2009 when the new stadium is ready.

    I just want some consistency in the coaching staff and some patience from our Austrian friends to build a product that is worth paying for after years of failure. I don’t think that is too much to expect…

    Reply
  4. coach- “And the Olympics? What a disaster for us. Another starter bites the dust and Jozy didn’t do much for his transfer value either”

    how do you figure?? while he didnt score, he showed that he can still produce with 2 sometimes even 3 players marking him…. while i say produce im refering to forcing the defence to foul him outside the box which led to so many chances for adu, some of which resulted in goals….

    i dont like saying it, but i wouldnt be surprised if this increased his value in England.. id much rather see him playing somewhere else tho

    Reply
  5. Joamiq:

    I’m not sure if you are deliberately twisting what I said in my post, or if you are really having a hard time comprehending what I was saying.

    I said “It will actually be considerably harder this year. A whopping six teams will be eliminated. That’s more than %40 of the league. That’s a far cry from when all you had to do was avoid finishing last.”

    The use of the word “whopping” was a little bit tongue in cheek. I was hoping that was obvious, but I can certainly understand you not seeing it that way. However, that being said, it is going to be harder this year than last year, and much harder then when the league only eliminated two teams. That’s triple. Yes, that’s much harder. For some reason you turned my “considerably harder” into “monumentally more difficult”. Why? You’re picking on your own words that you attributed to me. To make your argument more valid you had to change what I said.

    Also, your mentioning of the Galaxy seems to support my argument more than yours, so I don’t know why you would even mention it. The Galaxy didn’t make it, did they? Even though they had one less team to pass. That demonstrates how hard that will be this year, not the other way around.

    Then you said:

    “And you’re not actually assuming that RB isn’t going to sign anyone, right?”

    No, I wasn’t, and I didn’t say that either. Why are you even asking me that when I clearly reference NYRB signing players in my post? I said, I wasn’t assuming, like you are, that NYRB’s signings would necessarily get their season turned around because the players aren’t guranteed to be good signings and other teams will have new signings too.

    You said:

    “aristotle, are you forgetting that this is MLS? RB can forfeit the first month of games and still make the playoffs.”

    That’s not saying that it would be easy for RBNY to finish in front of six teams after a bad start to the season? You’re saying they could forfeit a month’s games and still do it.

    You said:

    “Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t say, as you claim, that the team will “easily” be able to finish in front of the bottom six.”

    Again refer to your above quote where you say NYRB could forfeit the whole first month and still do it.

    Reply
  6. aristotle, you’re joking with the “whopping six teams”, right? Like, you don’t really think that 6 teams eliminated is monumentally more difficult to overcome than 5, right? And you’re not actually assuming that RB isn’t going to sign anyone, right?

    Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t say, as you claim, that the team will “easily” be able to finish in front of the bottom six. I don’t think the team is in great shape, and dropping points early in the season doesn’t help. That said, finishing 8th out of 14 only takes a late season hot streak. Look at how close last season’s Galaxy came after being declared dead very early on. You can’t play your way out of an MLS playoff spot in the first month. If RB gets off to a bad start and signs 2-3 new players, it’s not a stretch to say they’ll still have a reasonable shot at making the playoffs.

    Reply
  7. Joamiq:

    That didn’t really have anything to do with my thinking because I wasn’t assuming, like you obviously are, that RBNY will actually sign a few players that will make it into a team that can come off of a bad start and make the playoffs. Now that you mention it though, I think you might be the one forgetting. It will actually be considerably harder this year. A whopping six teams will be eliminated. That’s more than %40 of the league. That’s a far cry from when all you had to do was avoid finishing last. You’re basically saying that even if RBNY were to get off to a bad start, after they sign their players in the summer they will easily be able to finish in front of more than six teams. You have a higher opinion of NYRB’s current situation than I do. Plus, other teams will sign players as well.

    Reply
  8. I hate to say it, but given Metro/RB’s history of coaching turnover, the crappy field that we play in, the cost of living in our area, and the utter lack of success throughout our history, please tell me what is so attractive about playing for RB? It’s not like we have the pick of the litter, so we’ll have to be patient and hope for some scraps to come our way from South America. Quite frankly, I think JCO is overrated. Saying he was an assistant in the EPL is a bit of an overstatement. I doubt he was Keegan’s right hand man or anything like that. If I were interested in signing for MLS, I’d look at the Galaxy, DC and Houston first. RB would be 4th-5th option.

    Reply
  9. Where are you people getting this idea that JCO has now “reduced that to 1-2 players”? He’s adding 1-2 before the transfer window ends and 3 overall. That hasn’t changed.

    aristotle, are you forgetting that this is MLS? RB can forfeit the first month of games and still make the playoffs.

    Reply

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