July 25, 2007
Both the KC Star and the AP on SI.com are reporting that Kansas City Wizards forward Eddie Johnson has turned down EPL club Derby County's transfer offer. Meanwhile, MLS has reportedly agreed to a $2 million transfer fee for Freddy Adu. But, that deal is on hold while Adu's agent is negotiating a new contract with Benfica.
The interesting thing with these two stories is that it is the players involved that are making these decisions and not MLS or the player's current club holding things up.
There have been issues in the past with players such as Shalrie Joseph, Clint Dempsey, and Eddie Johnson where European clubs have seen their advances stopped either by the league demanding more money for the player than the club wanted to offer, or the team saying that they didn't want to lose the player.
The most interesting thing is that Eddie Johnson's confidence is so high, that he's saying that he'll wait and the offers will only get better as he continues to score goals in MLS and hopefully for the US Men's National Team.
Only time will tell whether Eddie's gamble will work out, or if his play will take a turn for the worse, like it did after he signed his current big money contract with MLS a few years ago.
And while the Adu to Benfica deal is currently on hold and Adu is still playing for Real Salt Lake, one gets the feeling that it's merely a matter of when the deal with Benfica gets done and not if it gets done.
MLS gets a win and a tie on the opening day of Superliga play
FC Dallas and Chivas de Guadalajara played to a 1-1 draw and the LA Galaxy got an assist and a late goal from Landon Donovan in a 2-1 win over Pachuca on the opening day of Superliga 2007 play.
Tonight, DC United will host Monarcas Moralia at RFK and the Houston Dynamo will host Club America.
All Superliga games are being broadcast by TeleFutura. So, tune in and hit the mute button until someone scores a gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool.
Tony Sanneh officially signs with the Thunder
Tony Sanneh has officially signed a two week deal with his hometown team while he gets back into shape after missing time recovering from offseason hip surgery.
Sanneh is expected to be in the Thunder lineup tomorrow night when they host the California Victory. But, he will not be making the trip to Rochester for Saturday night's game between Rochester and Minnesota at PAETEC Park.
News and Notes:
- Scott Vallow sat down for lunch recently and had a pretty extensive Q&A session. And come on Scott, we all know you have your Tivo subscription for Flava of Love.
- While Michael Lewis is having a harder time "Surviving Beckham" than I am, this headline from the LA Times article on the Galaxy's 2-1 win over Pachuca made me want to smack someone. Apparently someone at the LA Times thinks that it's a miracle if the Galaxy win a game without Beckham.
- Ives Galarcep and Frank Dell'Apa both chime in on the better on field DP debut from over the weekend.
- The KC Star has a good article on the Wizards work towards landing a jersey sponsor. I'm surprised that less than half the teams in the league have done deals to date.
- Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle doesn't seem too happy to see the Earthquakes coming back in 2008. Seriously, who peed in his Cheerios?
- The W-League playoff brackets are set. I'll be pulling for the Washington Freedom to be the Eastern Conference champs so that Casey Zimney can play a couple more games at PAETEC Park.
- John Ball and the US futsal team drew with Ecuador 3-3 yesterday at Rio 2007. It looks like the US will need a minor miracle against Costa Rica this afternoon if they are to advance out of group play. But, that doesn't mean that John will be on a plane headed for Rochester this afternoon. The US has games scheduled through Saturday regardless of how they do today.
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.
