December 13, 2006
Adu thrilled to join Real - Deseret Morning News
Adu overjoyed to join RSL - MLSNet.com
It's a Win-Win for Adu and United - Washington Post.com
One thing we learned yesterday is that it only cost Freddy a PS3 to land the #11 shirt with Real Salt Lake. Apparently Alecko Eskandarian wouldn't give it up in DC, but Real Salt Lake's Chris Brown gave it up for the low, low price of one fo the hottest Christmas gifts of the year.
As expected, Adu was excited to once again play for his former U-17 national team coach in John Ellinger. The key will be the ability to play his natural position in the middle of the field and help set up Jeff Cunningham and Jason Kreis.
The interesting thing will be how this deal works for DC United. Will this be a case of addition by subtraction as Adu obviously wasn't happy with a number of things with regards to how he was used by United coach Peter Nowak. Also, can United parlay the allocation they received in the deal to acquire a more veteran natural outside midfielder that will help the team going forward.
While MLS might not like Adu moving from the east coast out west and from a big media market to one of it's smallest, I do think that this move should help showcase Adu's talents even more as he'll fit in a lot better with Real Salt Lake's team than he ever did in DC.
Wizards talking to high school about a new temporary home stadium
The Kansas City Wizards have begun talks with Raymore-Peculiar School District officials about potentially moving the team to Panthers Stadium as a temporary home while they try and get a new stadium built.
The Wizards currently call 79,451-seat Arrowhead Stadium home. However, they will need to find a new home for the next two summers as the stadium is closed for renovations.
Panther Stadium is built for 4,800 — but could be expanded to seat twice that many with additional bleachers. Besides capacity, another issue is Ray-Pec’s location. The high school is about 30 miles south of Arrowhead.
MLS clubs have had a rough time in temporary homes as both the Dallas Burn and Chicago Fire both had issues at high school venues while they were getting their new stadiums constructed.
More on Bradley getting the interim US job
Bradley Hire a smart one - Ives Galarcep - North Jersey.com
New U.S. Coach Must Embrace Latin Influence - Paul Gardner - New York Sun.com
Choice of Bradley no reason to panic - Nick Green - Daily Breeze.com
Only time will tell if Sunil Gulati and US Soccer made a huge mistake with the way they've handled replacing Bruce Arena as the head coach of the US Men's National Team.
Personally, I hope that it won't take long for people to get past how things were handled to this point and move towards showing support for Bob Bradley as he tries to do his best under difficult circumstances.
Dempsey to Fulham and Mastroeni to Serie B could happen
Bell is reporting that MLS will get $2.5 million from Fulham for US National Team and New England Revolution star Clint Dempsey. There have been previous reports that Fulham was having a hard time securing a work permit for Dempsey. It will be interesting to see if this does happen.
Colorado Rapids midfielder Pablo Mastroeni would have an easy time moving to Italy's Brescia since he holds an Italian passport. Since the Rapids have already traded away goalkeeper Joe Cannon this offseason, letting Mastroeni go would be another head scratching move by a team that is about to open a new stadium.
What says marketing push more than losing your team's two key players, right?
The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and not necessarily those of the Rochester Rhinos or SoccerSam.com. Feel free to send any comments or complaints to news@soccersam.com. James promises to read (but not to respond) to all of them.
