By RYAN TOLMICH
After a year in the club wilderness, Juan Agudelo is officially a member of the New England Revolution.
The Revs announced Friday that the club has officially re-signed Agudelo, who featured for the club in 2013. The 22-year-old forward scored seven goals in 14 games for the Revs in his lone season with the club before departing MLS for a move to England’s Stoke City.
Due to the circumstances of Agudelo’s original departure, the Revs retained the forward’s rights upon his return to MLS without the use of the allocation order.
“Juan is a player that we always knew that we would be interested in welcoming back to the club if the opportunity presented itself, and now it has,” said Revs general manager Michael Burns. “He is familiar with our club, our coaches, many of his teammates and the system that we play so we are confident that he will be able to fit right in and help us straight away.”
By signing with the Revs, Agudelo puts an end to a roughly year-long struggle to find a club, as work permit issues derailed the forward’s time at Stoke City. Agudelo was last seen featuring on loan for FC Utrecht, where he scored three goals in 14 appearances.
Agudelo is expected to join the team next week for preseason training in Casa Grande, Arizona.
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What do you think of the move for Agudelo? What do you expect from the forward this season?
Share your thoughts below.
That front 6 for NE looks pretty nasty on paper.
———— Davies ————— Agudelo —————
Rowe/Fagundez—– Nguyen ——————– Bunbury
—————————- Jones —————————–
Need Scotty Caldwell on the field, otherwise Jones is tied down and can’t roam. Which means that likely we’ll either see Agudelo on the wing, or more likely IMO is that Davies and Agudelo will platoon the lone striker position.
Man, I sure wish I had a job.
“Due to the circumstances of Agudelo’s original departure, the Revs retained the forward’s rights upon his return to MLS without the use of the allocation order.”
TRANSLATION: it makes sense for him to return to his club, so MLS will create a new rule to allow him to do so.
I am pretty sure it is because they made him an offer which he turned down. This is actually one of the few, clear MLS rules. If your contracting team makes you an offer and you go abroad anyway, they retain your rights if you return with 3 years, I believe.
Yeah, this is one case in which it’s not at all a mystery
It’s going to be interesting to see if he gets back on the rails. His whole Euro obsession threw his career off the rails and I wouldn’t recommend going fallow for months at a time. But he can play and hit a cross. If NER can get him rolling it might redound to the national benefit.
I also think NER has many mids and setup men and really needs a striker, not so much technical help.
He is a perfect example of what can happen if you get bad advice. He had an opportunity to stay with Utrecht last yea, but turned them down because he was insistent on Stoke. He than tried that disastrous attempt to get citizenship in another Euro country. He should loose that agent or whoever is giving him that advice. Utrecht probably did not want to wait for that situation to be resolved either. I think playing along Rubio Rubin would have been great to build chemistry on the wing play.