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Report: Robles to Red Bulls called off

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Photo by Howard C. Smith/ISIphotos.com

One-time U.S. national team goalkeeper Luis Robles won't be manning the nets at Red Bull Arena after all.

Robles' proposed move to the New York Red Bulls has been called off after the league ruled that Robles would have to go through the allocation order after initially claiming he could be added as a discovery signing, according to the Washington Post.

Robles was supposed to arrive in New York on Friday to hammer out a deal with the Red Bulls, but those plans have reportedly been cancelled in light of the new ruling.

The fact that the 27-year-old Robles, currently a backup at 2. Bundesliga side Karlsruher SC, could be deemed a discovery signing did not make much sense to begin with. The allocation order process is used to disperse U.S. national team players or former MLS players who went abroad for a transfer fee who return to sign with the league (the league just released its rules for the 2012 season, which can be found here, and the language on the allocation order is pretty clear).

Although Robles has not factored into the U.S. set-up for two-and-a-half years, he was on the 2009 U.S. FIFA Confederations Cup roster and earned his only cap in the 2009 CONCACAF Gold Cup. At first, MLS ruled that since Robles was no longer part of the U.S. player pool, the allocation order did not apply to him before ultimately changing course. Sometimes players go years between national team appearances. The fact that Robles had already been established as a national team player should have eliminated any gray area.

The most recent player to go through the allocation order, Seattle Sounders forward Sammy Ochoa, was last a U.S. youth international in 2008 and has never appeared for the senior team. For him to have been deemed allocation-worthy and for Robles to have been able to circumvent the system would not have been consistent. 

Other players who went through the allocation order last season were Jay DeMerit, Kenny Cooper, Charlie Davies, Benny Feilhaber and Freddy Adu. After signing with MLS on Thursday, Eddie Johnson will be distributed through the allocation order on Friday.

The only way for U.S. youth internationals — something that does not pertain to Robles — to get around the allocation order is if they had previoulsy been offered a contract by the league but did not sign before the MLS SuperDraft or if they signed a Generation adidas deal after the SuperDraft. In those cases, they would go through a weighted lottery. Lee Nguyen, Soony Saad and David Bingham are recent examples of that.

An exception to that is recent Portland Timbers signing Charles Renken, who was able to circumvent the allocation order after the league's other 18 teams all claimed to have no interest in signing the U.S. Under-20 midfielder. Portland had offered to use its allocation order spot on Renken, but the league deemed him to be a "waiver" signing instead.

With Robles no longer in play, rookie Ryan Meara and Jeremy Vuolo remain the Red Bulls' lone goalkeepers. Should Robles eventually choose to sign with MLS and go through the allocation process, he could still wind up in New York, which holds the 12th spot in the current order.

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Comments

  1. Robles is not out of contract. Karlsruhe would have dissolved his contract with mutual consent to allow the move, but he is still under contract.

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  2. Single-Entity Management is not the problem in and of itself; the league could allow teams to sign whichever players they choose while still sharing profits/losses. And that’s precisely what they should do, especially when that’s what they do for foreign talent! It’s beyond absurd how MLS has gone out of its way since day one to prove to American players that, unless your name is Landon Donovan, they are second-class citizens. Don Garber likes to talk a good game about keeping more top U.S. talent in the league, but until and unless he and his moneyed handlers get a clue and start treating top Americans like they’re as important to the league as foreign players, there’s not much chance of that ever happening. The league should have ONE draft, for college players, and that is ALL! MLS just loves this idiotic cloak-and-dagger B.S.; they have more ridiculous rules than any political body, and those rules are more arcane than the freakin’ Freemasons! And all they ever serve to do is make the league look like a bad joke, from the “reallocation” of Valderrama to Tampa Bay to the initial “grandfathering” of Donovan as a non-DP to the “yes…oops, we actually mean no!” handling of Luis Robles. If MLS ever wants to be taken seriously, it needs to start acting like a real sports league and stop acting like an experiment in micromanaged socialism gone comically wrong!

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  3. You heard where? Can you cite a source? Or are you making stuff up? Ireland by the way is a major talent and would require a fee at market value to recoup what Villa paid for him.

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  4. same here.. This story is funny because MLS is screwing itself over with their own rules and NY shows that their foreign management does not understand them. In the end another US international player turns down MLS.

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  5. This has an easy and often used solution. New York needs to trade for the first selection. DC had to do this to get Freddy Adu in the draft. LA had to do this to get Landon in an allocation. This has been a pretty consistent thing in MLS. If you want the player, make a good enough offer to whomever is first in the allocation order.

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  6. “the league just released its rules for the 2012 season, which can be found here, and the language on the allocation order is pretty clear.”

    Unless you’re the Galaxy and want a player…

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  7. I hate the moronic league allocation rules. Stuff like the salary cap I can understand. All that the league allocation ruling does is keep players from playing in MLS.

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  8. I heard NY wanted to pay 9 million in transfer fees for Stephen Ireland and bid was rejected by MLS and the other owners. Why would you pay 9 million for him? This FO is a complete joke and so is the owners. Someone buy this team

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  9. I know the rules are the rules, but this rule stinks. How can you possibly make a guy who’s only has 1 measly cap go through the allocation process. Because of this ridiculuos rule we are going to lose out on a pretty decent American player playing in MLS. Isn’t the league all about trying and get the most talented footballers to play here? Gale Abosoumaonde is going to play in the NASL for goodness sake because he doesn’t want to go through the allocation process. Does that make any sense?

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  10. The league made a mistake by telling Red Bulls something without reviewing the league rules. Now they made an official ruling and fixed the mistake. The last thing the league needs is more fuel to the claims that it favors big market teams and bends rules for them.

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  11. Like I was saying the other day, apparently the worse thing than Bouna Condoul is everyone else they’ve tried to replace him with.

    In terms of saying they’ve suffered since Howard was around, his actual playing period was a small window. Most of his first team time was 01-03, because he had to bid his time in the pecking order.

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  12. This is a relatively recent device that replaced the older ad hoc approach to US signings. So I don’t think this is a “since 1996” sort of thing. And while a draft order may re-distribute I think the main thrust is, like most drafts, trying to limit bargaining by having a league agreed salary instead of a bidding war for the services of often highly desirable senior and youth internationals.

    The difference between Americans and foreigners on this seems odd at first blush but then you consider we have foreign player limits, but no limit on Americans, US players can be quite the catch, etc. Plus a foreign marquee player may have a definite preference about location that may need to be honored to snag the player. But so might Dempsey if he came back, to be fair.

    The draft nominally trends towards parity but Renken just went to mid-table Portland, Feilhaber didn’t go to the first team on the list, salary comes in, need comes in, it’s not strict re-distribution.

    I think they could better address this by limiting the length of time since your cap to go under the rule, although then you’d get into how to handle youth prospects who may be as eagerly sought and stalwarts at an age group, but not necessarily senior-capped.

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  13. It’s tough for NY, but the league made the right call. The rules are the rules and the league should not be showing favoritism to any particular team.

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  14. MLS needs to get its act together, consistent, rational rules, consistent enforcement. One good decision, not a flipflop.

    IMO, Robles was picked up to be a clipboard carrier for the Gold Cup, and, though rewarded with a cap, was really picked because he was a prospect without a bunch of plans who could be called in with minimal negotiations to fill the roster. You could argue he wasn’t even a real pool player then, and that Haiti experience probably made it to where if he gets another callup, he’d have to earn it.

    The way to avoid this kerfuffle is make a clear standard and stick to it, then enforce it to the letter. “Ever listed in the US pool,” “currently in the US pool,” “called up within 12 months,” “capped,” “capped in 2012.” What you want is a clear in-out and if you do what the rule says teams can moan but it won’t be a big deal because it’s the rule.

    I’d say they should hold a draft for those capped since the last World Cup — 2010, two years ago, not that it feels like it sometimes — which would be a fair standard that captures the real current pool without snagging guys like Robles who were bit players years ago and are nominal internationals at best.

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  15. This is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. MLS needs to sort this crap out. Why should ANY out-of-contract player, regardless of nationality or experience be prevented from negotiating a deal with a team of his choosing?

    It’s time the single entity structure go the way of the shootout.

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  16. The lottery process is even more opaque than the allocation list, because it seems to proceed at the league’s discretion. If a player is deemed sufficiently noteworthy, the league proposes a lottery — which is why Renken was offered initially as a lottery choice, but a former US youth teammate like Stefan Jerome simply went on trial with DC United.

    Allocations seem to have objective criteria, which Robles got caught up in. Them’s the rules. He skipped out on signing with DC, but because he made the national side, he’s still faced with no choice. Lotteries happen, but seemingly with less objective criteria.

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  17. I think you’re mistaken about the Renken affair. He was not subjected to allocation process, because he never played for the US national side — only youth teams. I am fairly certain that Portland expressed interest in a proposed lottery for Renken, but the league determined that wasn’t needed because no other team wanted to participate.

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  18. If Adu (who’s has had so first team games in the past 3 years you can almost count them on 1 hand) requires use of an allocation than so would Robles.

    Personally, I think a couple of factors are at work here. I suspect another team said “hey–why don’t they have to use an allocation?” b/c assuming someone at the top goes for EJ, NYRB had used their spot on Robles (not likely now) than it moves another team closer to the top. Why does that matter? As the US gets closer to WC qualifying, don’t be surprised to see a number of Americans looking to either be closer to Klinsi’s eye, more available for US camps or able to get more playing time. So a team that’s angling for a better shot at someone like that might love to see other teams use their allocation spots.

    And, the bit about foreigners…that’s regulated by DP limits. As for Americans have no choice, actually you do, it’s just not straight forward. Teams can arrange trades ahead of time (to move up in spots…as DCU did to get Troy Perkins) or trade for a player.

    Right now, a high percentage of US professional players come from California, Texas, NY/NJ and the DC area. Not so many from Utah, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio. This is a good way (like the draft) of helping teams that might not be strong (and avoiding the curse of many of the foreign leagues where the same teams dominate nearly every year) and keeping competitive balance.

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  19. Completely agree. Just how many parity-ensuring mechanisms does MLS really need? This is like a perpetual draft order.

    Does Robles have any choice in this? Could he go through the allocation process (to see who picks him) and then decide to stay in Germany if he doesn’t like the team and/or the offer? Or does he have to sign with MLS first and then wait to see which team he will be playing for?

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  20. This will certainly go a long way towards changing the perception MLS makes these rules up as they go along.

    Todd Durbin: Calvinball master!

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  21. So, basically, if you are a foreigner who plays for your national team, it is easy to be signed by the team you pick in MLS. If you are an American who played at any point for the USMNT, you have absolutely no choice in what team you play for in MLS. That makes zero sense. An allocation order may have been useful in 1996 when they were first organizing the league and MLS had to distribute USMNT players to the various new teams, but it really is pointless at this time now that the league is successful.

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  22. Soler/Backe revealing their complete incompetence once again. This is getting old. Brings to mind the quote from Bondy’s recent NY Daily News article:

    “If the writing was on the wall, the Austrian ownership chose to ignore it: Soler, a former player agent in Europe, was in charge of Norwegian club IK Start when it was relegated and nearly went bankrupt. But he was given the keys to the Red Bulls nonetheless.”

    Reply

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