Top Stories

Wheeling and dealing on first day of MLS off-season (UPDATED)

  Brian Carroll (ISPhotos.com)

MLS teams wasted no time making deals after the end of the 2010 season, in part because of the looming MLS expansion draft.

The Columbus Crew continued its dismantling of its 2008 championship team by dealing midfielder Brian Carroll to the Phiadelphia Union (NOT D.C. United) for a conditional second round pick and an allocation. 

The deal re-unites Nowak and Carroll after the two spent time at D.C. United, where both helped D.C. to the 2004 MLS Cup title.

Meanwhile, the New York Red Bulls sent former 2008 first-round pick Jeremy Hall to the Portland Timbers for a third-round draft pick. The Red Bulls did not plan on keeping Hall on its protected list, but Hall was clearly an expansion draft target for both Portland an Vancouver.

Portland wasn't done dealing. The Timbers also dealt an allocation to Los Angeles for an international player slot for the 2011 and 2012 seasons. The slot returns to the Galaxy after 2012.

Colorado celebrated its MLS Cup victory last night, but made a deal on Monday, sending defenders Julian Baudet and Danny Earls to Seattle for Peter Vagenas.

We will update this posts with any other trades that go through.

For now, feel free to share your thoughts on these deals in the comments section below.

Comments

  1. im not saying going to seattle sucks, im sure tons of players would love to join seattle, im just saying to do it less than 24 hous after winning the champioship sucks

    Reply
  2. NYRB got something for nothing. By that I mean…he was going to be exposed in the expansion draft. He’s young, fast, semi-versatile, and relatively cheap plus not foreign. So that means it’s a guarantee that either Vancouver or Portland would pick him (probably Vancouver b/c Soehn have seen him a lot as U.Md and DCU do scrimmage at times and DCU looked very hard between Hall and Wallace). And in that case-you get nothing for him (other than another player on your roster doesn’t get picked.

    As it is, you got a 3rd round pick for a guy who was a certainty to be selected by one of those two teams.

    Reply
  3. First, DCU didn’t trade Carroll, he was picked in the expansion draft by SJ who (in a pre-arranged deal) traded him to Columbus and Sigi Schmid.

    Second, Brian Carroll is like a lot of good players in MLS–how good he is depends upon the system. If you want a box-to-box D-Mid like Beckerman or a distributor like Hernandez, he’s not your guy. If you want a smart, cerebral D-mid who makes smart tactical fouls but doesn’t pick up cheap stupid cards, who covers from sideline to sideline maybe better than any D-mid in MLS and has a tremendous work-rate, than Brian Carroll is your guy. As part of a 3-5-2 or a 4231 he can be a great fit.

    Carroll and Nowak will be a great fit. Ray Hudson tried to make Carroll an outside defender. Nowak started him at D-mid from day one and he was superb during Nowak’s time at United, much less so when Soehn took over.

    Reply
  4. Well, we did get a 2nd round draft pick from NYRB for Talley. To me that cancels out the King trade, although I can’t make much of an argument for the Perkins trade.

    Reply
  5. A third round pick for Hall? Isn’t he worth more than that? He was a first round pick. Yes he got injured, but c’mon…

    Reply
  6. I definitely agree. The time he spent subbing in for Reis at NE while he was injured was impressive. He has a good read on the game, amazing relexes, and he isn’t afraid to command his defense. Everything I love in a keeper!

    Reply
  7. Dude, Brian Carroll sucks. Did you see him against Bafana Bafana? Anyone can make square passes if they have 30 secs on the ball.
    He was useless at DCU, that’s why we traded him. And now, few years later Columbus found out the same thing. Now if only the DCU brain trust grabs Maykel Galindo on the cheap, we might actually start to get somewhere.

    Reply
  8. VANCOUVER:

    Blaise Nkufo-SEATTLE

    Bruno Guarda- DALLAS

    Wells Thompson- COL

    Shea Salinas- SJ

    Devon McTavish- DC

    Dasan Robinson- CHI

    Conor Chinn-NYRB

    Greg Sutton- NYRB

    Andrew Jacobsen- PHI

    Gino Padula- COLUMBUS

    PORTLAND:

    Tim Ward- SJ

    Joseph Mgwenya- HOUSTON

    Patrick Ianni- SEATTLE

    Ryan Cochrane- HOUSTON

    Bryan Jordan- LA

    Dax McCarty- DALLAS

    Ned Grabavoy- SLC

    Pat Phelan- NE

    Jason Garey- COLUMBUS

    Peter Lowry- CHI

    Reply
  9. FC Dallas Unprotected

    * Avila, Eric
    * Cunningham, Jeff
    * Davies, Kyle
    * Edward, Edson
    * Guarda, Bruno
    * Harris, Atiba
    * Hernandez, Daniel
    * McCarty, Dax
    * Rodriguez, Milton
    * Sala, Dario
    * Yeisley, Jason

    Reply

Leave a Comment