The San Jose Earthquakes have hit the goalkeeper jackpot.
Entering Wednesday's lottery for highly touted University of California goalkeeper David Bingham with the fifth-highest odds of winning (8.8 percent), the Earthquakes cashed in by landing the final 2011 Generation adidas prospect on the market.
Bingham enters an appealing situation. Aside from the fact that San Jose is about 30 minutes from his hometown of Pleasanton, Calif., he can be mentored by incumbent starter Jon Busch while presumably assuming back-up duties immediately.
As a result of winning the lottery, San Jose will not be included in any other prospective player lotteries during the 2011 season.
What do you think of Bingham landing in San Jose?
Share your thoughts below.
That’s true. I suppose the reason we see less teams opt out of lotteries for young players in other positions is because they can always be slightly shifted around the field; GK is a more singular and specialized position obviously.
Fair enough. I’ll take your word on it as you certainly have more access to scouts’ opinions. I will say, though, that it is interesting that five teams opted out of the Bingham lottery and may say something about those teams’ confidence to develop young goalkeepers.
(SBI-The teams that opted out already have young goalkeepers on board. D.C. has Hamid, Houston has two youngsters AND a youth national team GK who’s developing, Chivas is bringing in a young Mexican. The only team with a top young goalkeeper that stayed in the lottery was Chicago.)
Danny Szetela sure didn’t. He whined for two years after going to Columbus. Also, I don’t think Luis Gil was from Salt Lak.
Hmm off the top of my head Lambo, Seitz, Perk, Cervi. I’m not at all condemning any of these guys as busts, and I could be wrong, it just seems to me like elite goalkeeping prospects take a little more time to get settled in, might get shuffled between clubs more, and sometimes don’t pan out at all from their projection around college or so. Could just be that that position takes longer to mature, I dunno.
(SBI-Scott, neither Perk or Cervi was considered a blue-chip prospect coming out of college. Perk was a good college keeper and youth national team keeper who never quite developed. Cervi was pretty much an unknown before turning heads at the Combine. They weren’t in the same league in terms of prospect ratings as the likes of Frei, MacMath, Bingham, etc. Lambo was a very speculative GA signing, someone who was always going to take years to develop. Of the players you listed, only Seitz really fits the bill and he wound up spending three years as a back-up, getting no games, which clearly didn’t help his cause. In short, true bluechip goalkeeping prospects don’t fail at any greater rate than true bluechip field players.)
Great for both the Quakes and Bingham!
The lotteries, I know, I know, but still I’d like players to be able to try and get on the squad of their choosing. Supply, demand, free market, fre choice, capitalism, American principles, just not practiced in this country… 😉
Of course that assumes Bingham wanted to go to the Quakes; perhaps he’d have preferred going to the Red Bulls, or Craven Cottage! What happened with his Fulham trials?
Lenhart is a solid #2 striker to play alongside Wondo. What the Quakes really need is a CAM.
Seems like highly-touted goalkeeping prospects pan out much more infrequently than those in other positions. So, I’ll keep an eye on him, but we shall see.
(SBI-From Brad Guzan to now, exactly how many top notch goalkeeping prospects have flopped exactly? The last two Generation adidas goalkeepers were Stefan Frei and Sean Johnson. Josh Lambo didn’t pan out but he was very young and more of a long-term project. Bingham is older and much more polished. Fact is there haven’t been many top college goalkeeping prospects in recent years on that level, and they seem to pan out at a pretty good rate.)
seems reasonable. but I still think that GA contracts should be given out before the draft only. if you are going to have a draft, and MLS will for the foreseeable future, then eligible players shouldn’t be able to enter the league except through that mechanism, and they certainly shouldn’t get special contracts (like GA) if Bingham was unable to reach a GA agreement, or unwilling to enter the draft without one, then he should wait a year. or sign with another league. otherwise, why bother? other players reached agreements without knowing how the draft worked out, that’s an unfair advantage.
Rules that are rigged are worse than no rules at all. They undermine confidence in the system.
If it was rigged good job. I think the young players should be allowed to play for the team that is close to home.
Correct on everything except Ampai is not a GA, he was a college senior.
If the Earthquakes had come out of the SuperDraft with both Ampai and Bingham they would have been graded as having a pretty excellent draft, (two GA first round quality talents). Quakes fans should be thrilled.
A lottery to hire a goalkeeper… only in America…How pathetic.
Who cares if he went to the quakes. He should have a choice where he wants to go.
And by the way he wasn’t at the draft because he was training in england, but i still think the lottery should be removed.
Not sure if you can use that as a benchmark. That trade from Toronto was a huge over-pay. For example, Timbers traded Jordan Greye, a guy who played 20 games for DC, for a 2014 4th round (or 1st round supplemental) pick. I know he’s not great, but a trade for a guy 3 years from now? Yes, Gil was probably worth more than what they got, but I feel pretty sure that Toronto HORRIBLY overpaid for Sturgis.
Who cares if it’s a conspiracy or not, shouldn’t we be hoping every talented young player goes where they want to be? Nagbe didn’t want to be drafted first to the Whitecaps because of his US immigration issues, isn’t it best for the league that he’s in Portland? Bingham wanted to remain in the area so he could complete his graduation requirements at Cal, isn’t it best that he go to the Quakes? It’s not like these guys are being unreasonable primadonnas, they have valid reasons. MLS doesn’t pay like the NFL, some talented kids don’t come out early because their parents won’t let them, it is in MLS’ best interests to be as accommodating as possible, when it can reasonably do so.
Quakes shoulD’ve kept JOE CANNON !!!!
Perfectly said.
Great for Bingham! Lands with people he knows, near home and near college. Hopefully that translates into him developing well.
Quakes got a freebie “top draft pick” essentially… hopefully MLS will revise these rules in the future so that players eligible for the draft just go through the draft process instead of this hocus pocus lotto.
Glad to have more depth that doesn’t cost us. Tough luck for our draft pick Tuttle- and probably the former pool GK Edwards, since I believe Andrew Weber is better/more experienced than both of them.
Now, about that striker pool…
This should be the perfect environment for Bingham, given that John Doyle ran the club the he grew up playing for and knows him very very well.
This lottery most definitely could have been rigged, but as a Quakes supporter, I don’t care. Pumped to have Bingham on the squad!
great news.
When a team with super low odds (like under 1%) and it’s the hometown team of the player wins one of these lotteries, then you can claim it’s a conspiracy. The NBA has a weighted lottery for top draft pick and the worst team has only won it 3 times since 1990. A couple years ago Chicago got it with only a 1.7% chance. These things happen.
And he was immediately dealt to RSL, one of his stated choices, for a 2nd round pick and use of an international spot.
For perspective, Nathan Sturgis was traded for the #8 pick in this year’s draft. No offense to Sturgis, but if he is worth the #8 overall pick then it seems Gil, given his potential upside, is worth more.
Sal Zizzo going to Chivas had the conspiracy theorists buzzing.
What other ones have happened? Luis Gil certainly isn’t from Kansas City and that’s the only other one I can remember.
The team he wanted. What’s the chances? The conspiracy theorists could have called this in advance. nothing seems on the up and up with these lotteries, then again, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Is it strange that the closest to home town teams always win these lotteries?