New York Red Bulls sporting director Jeff Agoos held a telephone conference call call today to take some questions from the media, and since he does have a habit of dancing around questions, the call sounded a bit like this:
In all seriousness, Agoos did share some interesting tidbits, including the following:
The Red Bulls will keep the Chivas USA designated player slot as long as MLS maintains the Designated Player rule, which means that if MLS votes to keep the DP slot mechanism next year (which is expected), the Red Bulls will still have Chivas USA's slot (unless it trades the slot). My information with regard to the slot is a bit different, with the Red Bulls having the slot through the 2011 season.
The Red Bulls could go in any one of three directions with its vacant DP slot: use it, trade it or hold onto it and target someone for 2010. Agoos also sounded down on the idea of using the slot mid-way through the season.
While Agoos did not come out and say that he agrees with head coach Juan Carlos Osorio's opinion that the team is better off trading a DP slot than having two DP players on the roster, Agoos did agree that fielding a strong and balanced team is made tougher by the presence of two DP slots because of the amount of salary taken up.
Agoos confirmed that the Red Bulls did receive an allocation from Michael Bradley's transfer from Heerenveen to Borussia Moenchengladbach, but would not reveal how much the allocation was.
Agoos confirmed that Juan Pablo Angel is under contract for the 2009 season.
Agoos confirmed that the Red Bulls and Van Den Bergh have had extensive contract talks, but offered no new insight on the situation.
Those are the highlights. I will post more if any come to light.
What do you think of these developments? Share your thoughts below.