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MLS Notes: Crew cut Mendoza; Jakovic, Ream secure training stints and more

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Photo by Tony Quinn/ISIphotos.com

By FRANCO PANIZO

Andres Mendoza may have scored 13 goals in his first full season in MLS, but that didn't stop him from being let go by the Columbus Crew.

At times the subject of controversy due to his behavior, Mendoza was among the players whose options were declined by Columbus on Tuesday. The Peruvian Designated Player headlines a list that includes MLS's all-time leading goal-scorer Jeff Cunningham; midfielders Kevin Burns, Santiago Prim, Dejan Rusmir and Ben Sippola; and goalkeeper Alex Riggs.

Cunningham and Burns will be eligible for the MLS Re-Entry Draft, which begins next week. A full list of players eligible for that process will be made available on Wednesday.

Here are more MLS notes from Tuesday:

JAKOVIC, REAM TO TRAIN ABROAD

Bill Hamid won't be the only D.C. United player to train with West Bromwich Albion this offseason. Sources tell SBI that defender and Canadian international Dejan Jakovic will join the Premiership club for a training stint as well, following in the goalkeeper's footsteps.

Jakovic will join Hamid, Perry Kitchen (SC Freiburg) and Andy Najar (Tottenham) as D.C. players to train overseas this offseason.

Tim Ream, meanwhile is the latest MLS-based U.S. men's national team player to listen to Jurgen Klinsmann's advice of going to train abroad during the MLS offseason. The New York Red Bulls defender is set to join West Brom and Bolton Wanderers for training stints in the coming days. The two clubs have been keeping track of Ream for some time, according to Ream's agent, Patrick McCabe. 

UNITED DECLINE OPTION ON NINE PLAYERS

On a day when it acquired defender Robbie Russell, D.C. United declined the options of nine players, including that of long-time midfielder Santino Quaranta.

The other players whose options were declined are Brandon Barklage, Marc Burch, Steve Cronin, Devon McTavish, Kurt Mortsink, Joseph Ngwenya, Clyde Simms and Jed Zayner. All will be available in the Re-Entry Draft, according to a team release.

EARTHQUAKES TO ANNOUNCE SALES OF ON-FIELD LUXURY SUITES

The San Jose Earthquakes released details on their proposed $60 million soccer-specific stadium on Tuesday, details that revealed the club's plans of having 12 luxury suites. On the field.

The dozen luxury suites would cost $350,000 for a five-year contract and include 24-inch padded seats, couches, cocktail tables, flat-screen televisions, a bar area, catered food and a sliding glass door. Each suite accomodates 23 people.

The team is waiting to receive approval on its planned development permit at a public meeting with Planning Director Joe Horwedel on Dec. 14.

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Think Columbus releasing Mendoza is a good move for the club? Should Ream wait to make a move? Surprised Quaranta was let go by United? Like San Jose's luxury suite ideas, or are you too busy thinking of the blooper-like videos that may come as a result?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. The Crew FO’s main concern is dumping salary. How on earth can a team struggling to score goals allow a 13 goal scorer to leave the team? Even more outrageous if you don’t have a comparable or better player contractually locked up to replace him, which they don’t. However, I can already predict the series of articles we’ll be treated to because I’ve seen them all before:

    Crew in talks with unamed potential big signing from

    (insert big time league)

    Agent for (insert decent player that Crew would never in a million years pay up to get) in discussion with Crew

    (2 month before start of season) Player X signs with (insert foreign club). (this article would include the enormous salary the player received and possibly the offer the Crew made at about 20% of this figure)

    (1 month before start of season) Crew signs X and Y to shore up (insert offence, midfield or defense). (player X and Y will be 18-20 year old foreign players that no one has ever heard of. Fans will delude ourselves that we’ve signed some big up and comers but they will have little to no impact and wil be cut after the season)

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  2. Which is what they should do. Re-furb Kezar.

    The X thousands of euros and latins living near there, USF, plus the “SF scene” that pumps at least 15K to each Giants game for the sake of going to a game, plus the stronger bay area soccer communities in the North Bay and East Bay would all be better served.

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  3. You have no idea about the crazy money in the Bay Area; the Quakes will find someone to buy luxury boxes. (Hint, Cupertino is five miles west.)

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  4. So if you are not a USMNT player and did not play in college and do not have an option that a team declined to exercise, then there is no draft or allocation order for you to go through and any team can just sign you?

    This would include high school kids, foreigners who have never played in MLS, Americans who began their careers abroad (without playing college soccer), and anyone who played for a MLS team but whose contract expired?

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  5. It is widely, widely know that the stereotype of arizonians being racists is repeatedly proven by visible evidence time and time again. That state is an embarrassment as far as the rest of the free thinking country is concerned.

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  6. Think Columbus releasing Mendoza is a good move for the club? Should Ream wait to make a move? Surprised Quaranta was let go by United? Like San Jose’s luxury suite ideas, or are you too busy thinking of the blooper-like videos that may come as a result?

    Reply
  7. Hey – that was neat…the way you cut and pasted that from up top.

    Were you going to comment — or were you making a point that no one else commented on it, or ar you just showing off your mad computer skills?

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  8. GA contracts are just guys coming out of college few years early after playing in College, usually the best college players who get contracts of 100-200K/year, they don’t count towards cap, a lot of this is from Adidas MLS deal for youth development in their deal sponsor deal to MLS

    Usually there’s about 10 guys although recently we’ve seen about a 12+ with the young guys out of high school who are US youth players who get signed like Salgado, Gil etc.. they may be out of High School like Jack McInerney or Luis Gil. After a player participates in X amount of games or minutes they graduate & start counting towards cap, like Omar Gonzalez 2 years ago.

    Allocation order is just another way to help the lesser teams. When a former USMNT player who has ANY caps with senior team comes to MLS, they have to go thru allocation order. 1st team is the 1 with worst regular season record and the 2nd with 2nd worst so on… when you get thru all the non-playoff teams you start ranking the teams that got eliminated the earliest in playoffs, the ones with least points go 1st for this year Columbus would be after DC or Portland who were the teams closes to making playoffs I believe then Dallas, then NY etc etc

    Expansion teams usually get 1st pick, after a team picks they go to the bottom of the list and so on…. hope it helps?

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  9. I think you can Wikipedia it.

    You have the SupeDraft which is just where the best College players get picked which is now down to 2 rounds so only 38 players.

    Then you have the Supplemental Draft which is a continuation of the SuperDraft with what used to be the SuperDraft’s 3rd & 4th rounds as the 1st & 2nd rounds of the Supplemental Draft. Basically these are the guys from College nobody picked in 1st 2 rounds and not many teams were high on & will be offered developmental contracts of 32-40K that don’t count towards salary cap.

    Re-Entry is for players who have options who’s teams no longer want them, since in MLS there’s no intra-free agency you have to give something to a team for a players rights, this is a way for them to not be stuck like Hartman or I forget who else was stuck 2 years ago

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  10. Yeah but you’re not on the actual sideline in the Cowboys Stadium for NFL games.

    I’ve always wondered how that works for those seats, they don’t seem to be any higher up on the ground then if you were standing on the sidelines if fact they kind of look a bit lower to the field level, how in the hell do people see over the teams entire coaching staff and players standing on the sideline?

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  11. +1

    I’m happy to see someone making a legitimate point as opposed to constant bashing. Not only is the 2nd year always a stumbling block for most players, for whatever reason (in all sports), Ream is a young guy that had one problem snowball into another and I know everyone has had a difficult time in there life at one point and it’s no fun and at times it seems everything is falling apart and I actually applaud Ream’s attitude: He hasn’t blamed anyone or anything. Just himself. His talent is obvious. Teams from the best league in the world do not have you train with them just for fun and a team like Arsenal does not make a bid for you because you are garbage. I see Ream developing into a quality attacking CB with superb vision and passing qualities. Ream’s defensive positioning and aggressive attitude need definite attention and both can be best developed in England.

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  12. I read in most places 15K, with an easy expansion to 18K, which I assume would be closing off the open end of the U-shaped stadium, which I feel should be more like 17K or 16,500 with an easy 3K to 3,500 expansion into 20K, they should strive to get 20-22K people at games all the time eventually, I know it’s a small market but it can be done.

    I don’t think they should change their name, if San Francisco wants to pony up the money for a SSS, then fine but this is SJ team and it should stay that way. Golden St Warriors are already in Oakland, 49ers can’t wait to get out of the old dump that is Candlestick.

    All SF will be left with are the Giants, lucky the secured beautiful at&t park I guess

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  13. It’s going to be for 20 games, they’ll probably have a few friendlies each summer to complete the 20 game Season Ticket package.

    Also remember they are brand new on a new stadium. But more important is that there’s only about a dozen boxes, how many luxury boxes does Foxboro have? Or Meadowlands for that matter or MetLife Stadium whatever it’s called now…

    Plus they’re going to get tickets to a bunch of other events, I think concerts they have to pay for but they get 1st dibs if I’m not mistaken.

    It’s a bit pricy but not so much. I think 300K at 60K a year would of been much better. 130 per game per person is better than 152 which is what it will be now.

    Lets hope all the peeps in Silicon Valley and the tech industries buy them and the Quakes play the 2013 season in their own Stadium, that would only leave DC who desperately needs and with their history deserves a stadium and New England which won’t progress until they move out of Gillette.

    Vancouver doesn’t have their own Soccer-Specific Stadium but BC Place will do, especially if they can fit more than 22K into it with games vs NY and if LA gets another big name star vs the Galaxy.
    Fingers crossed and then put pressure on Krafts and DC bureaucrats!

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  14. Is there anywhere that succintly explains all the drafts that MLS has? The Supplemental Draft, the Re-Entry Draft, the Superdraft, then Generation Adidas contracts and then there is the USMNT allocation order which is a bit like a draft; I can’t keep them all straight. Ives, if there is nowhere on the internet explaining this succintly, maybe a post on this would be appreciated by some readers.

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  15. Agreed. Ream simply had a sophomore slump this year with the extra games he had to play and a weaker team around him. I think he rebounds strongly in 2012 and anyone that thinks he should go is simply insane. The potential he showed his rookie year was tremendous and the third year can be the breakout year for draft picks(Chris Pontius and Brek Shea anyone?). I’d take Ream on DCU in a heartbeat.

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  16. Also, San Jose is apparently the 10th largest city in the country by population. I love SF, but past/present quakes play in downtown SJ so San Jose name is good.

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  17. I can’t stand this Ream bashing. Obviously people who have more experience see his potential and skills that people like you don’t see. Ream has had some downs happen to him this past season, but I he came up big for the Red Bulls towards the end. I think that was largely due to Marquez’s
    lackadaisical performance and comments that had an effect on him. When he was on the national team, he confidence was shut. His first appearance was against when everyone was horrible and again vs Ecuador when the US couldn’t even score.

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  18. No, that is like the LA Angels of Anaheim…very amateur. San Jose is more well-known now with the Sharks. If they built the stadium in San Francisco, that would be different.

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  19. Crew is runned by idiots!!! Mendoza & Cunningham were the type players start pick-up slack, for a team lacks quality creative middle.

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  20. I thought that DC had to let him go through the re-entry draft (to let another club get him at his current salary if they wanted him) before they could come back and offer him a new contract at lower terms?

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  21. really lame DC didn’t exercise Quaranta’s option…or even try to offer him a reduced salary. He clearly would have taken it:

    “I figured all along we’d get it done, regardless of whether they picked up the option,” said Quaranta, 27, who earned about $120,000 this season. “It’s disappointing. Done deal, see you later. It’s puzzling. It hurts. You put so much into your organization. ‘D.C. United’ were the first words my [2 1/2-year-old] son learned.”

    “…but with deep family roots in the Washington-Baltimore area, he said he’d have to think long and hard about resuming his MLS career elsewhere.”

    “This place means a lot to me. I’m going to miss all of the supporters, all of the people. It’s hard, but that’s business. I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

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  22. I think the whole point is that they’re super close to the field. Also, the article is apparently wrong, 18k, not 15k. Still think San Jose desperately needs to change its name to either say San Francisco(even if they’re not) or California, foreigners have great images of California, North or south, San Francisco, but not really San Jose, right or wrong…

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  23. So, it’s basically like the Cowboys stadium on-field luxury boxes but the SJ FO are trying to spin it like there’s nothing like it. Maybe not in Soccer/footy but Jerryworld beat them to it.

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  24. I hate to sound like a d*ck but the Quakes boxes actually sound like they are priced way too high.

    $350,000 / 5 years

    $70,000 per season/ 23 seats

    $3,043 per season / 18 home games

    $170 per game

    I have gotten USMNT luxury box seats for less than that at Foxboro and the Meadowlands.

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  25. Moreno needs to come out of retirement to reclaim his goals record. I hate to see the record in the hands of such a classless player as Jeff Cunningham.

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  26. Mendoza was picking up the pace towards the end of the season, and Renteria did work well with him when they were actually on the field together, but I’m ok with letting him go. I think Renteria will look just as good if not better with another strike partner up top.

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  27. Soooo glad Ngwenya and Cronin are out, but I don’t see why they had to cut Quaranta.

    I also don’t think the Crew should’ve cut Mendoza. I really hate the guy but when him and Renteria were paired up top they looked pretty good.

    Reply

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