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Several months of posturing have led to a compromise in the tug-of-war between the Montreal Impact and Houston Dynamo in the battle for Brian Ching.
According to the Houston Chronicle, the Impact are dealing Ching to the Dynamo for a conditional draft pick. Ching is also taking a paycut in the trade that should help the Dynamo create some space on its salary cap.
In the final analysis, the Dynamo have made out like bandits in the trade because the deal effectively means Houston could wind up freeing up cap space the size of a major allocation (from $100K to $200K) for a conditional draft pick.
It is difficult to call the trade a victory for the Impact considering the other players Montreal could have had in the expansion draft. That may be a bit of 20/20 hindsight though, as it is clear Montreal made the move with the hopes of prying more from Houston, like say Canadian defender Andre Hainault.
Now, the Dynamo get back the talismanic striker who will serve as club captain for what is expected to be his final season as a player.
I don’t think it’s out of line with the degree of publicity the teams and Ching displayed in the process. This wasn’t exactly a quiet resolution to an uncontroversial pick. Lot of airing out in the press.
A crybaby that took a 50% paycut and still has one more digit in his salary than you do, gets to play in a brand new stadium during his victory lap season, and just gave a big middle finger to an individual who he previously disliked and did not want to play for.
No. I got it. Thanks for watching over me!!!
Wow! It is unbelievable how much people make of this kind of thing.
Houston took a calculated risk in leaving a player available they would have wanted to keep, more for sentimental reasons than football reasons. He got picked, and they worked at a deal to get him back that will cost them a Superdraft pick. In other words, not very much, considering Houston will be at worst, a mid table team come year end. Even better, he will be of lower cost to the team than he would have had Montreal not selected him. Seems a reasonable move to me.
Montreal took a near risk-less chance at taking a player in an expansion draft in which they were the only team picking, and who they figured they might be able to turn into a player that was not left unprotected. That didn’t work, so they get a Superdraft pick for him instead. Would a likely bench or short term transitional player be worth more to a team than a mid to low level Superdraft pick? Maybe. Seems like half a dozen of one, or six of the other to me. Montreal has to have a 3-4 year plan with their roster. This likely means that most of the expansion selections will have moved on by the time the team is where it wants to be.
Was there really anyone available that Montreal didn’t take who would be a solid roster player for the next 3-4 years? Maybe, but no one they can’t find by other means. They really lost nothing here.
Moreover, anyone who thinks this has soiled Montreal’s reputation vis a vis the competition must assume some very soft skin.
Except they didn’t actually do that, that’s just how it can be spun afterwards. After all, if Houston lets Ching rot Montreal has burned a pick on a player they don’t want and you have $400K to play with. That’s DP money you can go out and buy any forward you can find. Houston’s optimal rational strategy was arguably to do nothing and anything less bails Montreal out of a serious bind. Houston got him back and we’ll see what he does, but that’s actually sentimentality winning out. It will only be smelling like roses if he stays healthy and performs above last year.
That’s because the union doesn’t release it until May.
Look at you — you got his joke, and didn’t even realize it.
I agree with your POV. If Houston was as wise as some suggest, why the pre-draft panic, why be in a position to give up a draft pick next year for a player you could have protected, and whose career is sufficiently on the wane you might have wanted the pick to replace him? They took a risk and paid a pick for it.
Montreal also got their bluff called. This was part of a squatting strategy that extended to other players like Barbara, who was traded for considerations also. I think they hoped to get more for Ching than they did, but his salary was so big that I think as time progressed the pressure was on them to make a move, since there’s no way Marsch and Ching wanted to be in the same space after Bradley/Marsch’s treatment of Ching in 2010. Kinnear was stubborn to form and all Montreal got was a pick next year. I don’t really see how this sort of nibbling gets them anywhere, they needed a player now to truly progress up the ladder, draft picks are gambles, etc.
That being said, Houston has now given up conditional picks for the next two drafts. From my POV the Kandji trade was the more justifiable use of a pick, though there is a “rental” risk depending how seriously one takes the European rumors, as well as a health risk with the knee. If he’s still fast, he offers tactical diversity at forward and perhaps even an emergency right wing. Ching, on the other hand, is a sentimental move and I think even at a 50%+ paycut — $200K — we’d be overpaying for 15 starts and 5 goals. He may also get hurt and be a money pit. That being said, he’s a solid forward still and the forward corps is definitely better and more tactically diverse than last year. Good enough to win the title? Probably not (I think we’re a #10 and maybe forward away). We could use a truly dominant scorer. But if enough of the forwards can stay healthy I think we’re solidly a playoff team.
Does anyone know where there is a listing of the MLS Player salaries for 2012? I can find the 2011 but not the ’12
That’s the thing, they never had any leverage. They thought they did but had seriously overestimated what they had. In the end, Montreal just had to dump him.
Marsch was expecting Houston to give up alot for Ching or for him to retire but Ching knew what he was doing so he decided to play and deal a huge cap hit to Montreal when he would probally rarely play.
Why did we let this team join MLS?
Any dummy could have held onto Ching if there was only a conditional draft pick in the offing.
I find it hard to believe that these were the terms given that the Impact had most of the leverage in the negotiations… I’m guessing there is more to this story (like say, Impact clearing cap space to bring in another player), or there is more to this trade.
Jesse Marsch = the fool at the poker table
They are French. That’s what the French do.
http://invadefrance.us/
My thoughts exactly. What’s a whiny b.
He means the players union. Not Philly.
Different situation in that Ching never wanted to leave his original club, not just transfer to a different one like Cesc did. Plus, Ching has handled himself more professionally than Cesc did during his saga in my opinion.
Brian Ching started out his pro career as a marginal player who was cut (by LAG I believe) and got back into MLS via waivers (DCU traded his rights to San Jose for Devin Barclay). There is much to admire about Ching and making a six figure salary isn’t something to whine about. But my point is that money isn’t at the point for the vast majority of players in MLS where I think it’s appropriate to say “so we jerk you around with trades and expansion only to move you again–deal with it”. If you make multiple millions a year, that’s one thing. But at even the kind of money that Ching makes you really can’t afford to move your family from Houston to Montreal and then back to Houston. What RSL did with Robbie Russell was exactly the kind of thing you wouldn’t see in the NBA or NFL but is exactly the kind of thing that classy teams in MLS do. This issue (wife’s job) cost TFC Richard Mulrooney. And it was a huge factor with Troy Perkins returning to the US.
As for “who won?” in this:
–Montreal is an expansion team. Their best hope is to be organized early, have a great locker room, work hard, play smart, stay healthy and win close games. A guy who by virtual of his skill and experience would have a lot of impact in teach schemes, the locker room, chemistry is someone you acquired with no intention of keeping and have now moved out? That’s “shades of Mo Johnston” and it’s dumb to be doing moves like that…it’s about being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
–Houston: they’ve struggled to add attacking talent and they’re opening a new stadium. While adding Ching is a plus, he’s also a guy they can’t count on for 25+ games a season and it would have been a far better marketing campaign for the stadium if he’d been around all off-season (he’d have been on all the season-ticket sales literature, the stadium posters, the vendor campaigns).
Neither is a crippling blow. But neither team wins here. To say someone was a winner is either to be guilty of playing soccer on paper or to judge by the potential of loss (i.e.: Houston is better with Ching than without him).
Wait?! How’d the Union get pulled into this? We’re very happy that Houston had a problem. Just kidding…I know what you meant.
If Ching goes crazy and bags 10-15 goals (I know, very far fetched) and we have to give Montreal a 1st rounder, that’s fine. We have Portland’s 1st round pick by virtue of the Kris Boyd deal.
Houston keeps their natural 1st rounder.
Dynamo win all the way, either way.
Actually, Ching’s salary was guaranteed for 2012 after he played in MLS Cup by virtue of having played in a certain minimum number of games in 2011. According to the CBA, his contract couldn’t be renegotiated.
How they exactly got him to sign a new deal that takes effect for 2012 that is ok with the Union and MLSHQ I don’t know, but they were smart to do it after all this mess.
Had Dom tried to do it without Ching being taken by Montreal, I don’t know if the Union would have been ok with it. We’ll never know now.
Dynamo came out huge winners here.
hahaha. Well played, sir, well played.
I assume that the conditions of the conditional draft pick are not public, as per the league’s usual rules?
As a neutral I would have preferred to see both teams get burned pretty badly from this fiasco. Feels pretty bad to see Houston come out of this more or less ahead considering they were trying to game the system as well.
Make it about sexism by ignoring the fact that he is talking about professional athletes (who have short careers) vs the rest of the workforce, classy.
I don’t think he’s saying it’s a problem that wives are making more, but that the effect of being traded is greater for MLS players than say MLB guys, since without million dollar salaries, it may force hard choices on the family (i.e. wife who may be the primary earner takes a pay cut to move to new city, or husband lives away from wife while in-season.)
“It is difficult to call the trade a victory for the Impact ”
Victories will be few and far between for the Impact this season.
sounds like the french caved..
more
I almost thought he wouldn’t get back but I kept pullin’ for him. I hope it instills some fire in him to produce a sh**load of goals this year before he retires.
Yeah, what’s the world coming to when the wife is makin morse than the husband.
Hey, that’s how they roll in MTL. We’re glad they’re now MLS’s problem.
The Dynamo left a player unprotected because he didn’t have much value to anyone else, another team picked him and tried to extort them, and they got him back on the cheap because he in fact didn’t have much value to anyone else.
Gaming the system or simply intelligently managing your assets?
I have to say that after the arrogance from Impact fans when they took Ching this is a rather satisfying conclusion.
I never could understand why people (specifically this site) kept thinking Montreal had the upper hand in this deal. It seemed a stupid move on Montreal’s part from day one. Yeah, Houston wanted the face of their franchise back, but they weren’t going to be held over a barrel for him. Every time I read about this, everyone talked about the huge mistake Houston had made in leaving him exposed. I never got it. Guess everyone sees through different lenses.
Whatever. I’m glad it’s worked out.
Actually, Montreal traded an expansion draft pick for a 2013 Superdraft pick. Houston traded a 2013 Superdraft pick for $200,000 in cap space. I don’t know if you call it a wash for Montreal or not but Houston certainly comes out smelling like roses.
You don’t think that the manner in which Houston tried to get themselves an extra protected slot in the expansion draft was gaming the system?
So Montreal got draft pick for a player they never wanted and Houston lost a draft pick and saved $200,000 for a player whose contract they didn’t have the guts to re-negotiate. Not sure who really won here. Actually, if Houston really needs Ching, I know who didn’t win.
If MLS were about big money with the benchwarmers all making $250k and all starters making at least $1 million, I wouldn’t have a problem with hard ball tactics. But right now, you see guys where the wife may make more money than the husband (Russell is a good example of this). I think there’s a lot to be said for teams being willing to show class and sometimes do what is best for the player at this stage of the league. So I’m glad Ching ended up back in Houston.
As for the arguments of “who won”? No-one did. Ching had his life temporary turned upside down. Houston gets him back as they open a new stadium and for less money. But let’s be clear here: he’s a shadow of what he once was and has a hard time staying healthy. Montreal: they played hardball and at a time when they need to be building cohesion (b/c expansion teams don’t win with depth and talent, they get competitive by working hard and playing cohesively and winning close games), they had a guy in camp in a high profile role who they really had no intention of keeping.
Everyone lost in this one. Not catastrophically so. But Houston could have likely gone to Ching in the off-season and said “we need to renegotiate” and I bet he’d have done it–20-30 MLS players do that every year. But b/c they didn’t protect him, that lost him for a chunk of the offseason and have to give up a draft pick. Montreal could have chosen another player and their camp and focus probably would have been better. And I’m sure Ching would have preferred none of it played out this way.
Nice to see this done. It was one of those moves that is technically legal, but really pretty low and manipulative and not really a good or classy way to run an organization. Glad to see Houston stood strong and karma backfired. MTL… build your team the right way with integrity and hard work rather than trying to find shortcuts and ways to game the system.
So I guess Ching is no longer an impact player.
whoa whoa whoa, theyre following the Mo Johnston formula
HAHHAHA
Dynamo FO is brilliant
Jesse Marsh got what was coming
And Ching will be wearing orange to open the stadium!
Chingado, what a cry baby.
What a fool Jesse Marsch is. Talk about overplaying your hand. It is just hilarious that they thought they were going to get Andre Hainault in exchange for Ching. Then reality set in and they realized they were stuck with a $450k salary. In the end, Houston gets their guy back and pays him $250k less than his contract. I can’t stop laughing.
What a truly bizarre saga this has been. Unlike most expansion draft dealings which send a player back to his old team for a draft pick or a bit of allocation money, apparently Montreal thought they could squeeze a killing out of Houston for Ching. In the end, they get the standard draft pick plus a bunch of ill will from everyone else in the league…and Houston gets the benefit of reworking Ching’s deal. Sheesh. So far Montreal is following the Canadian MLS team formula, I guess.
Not surprised, I want to find out more about this draft pick though.
Ching is back!!
Glad this is finally done. It was starting to feel like Cesc Part II.