well hopefully we won't be having another one of those for a long time if ever again...
2025 Roster and Transfer Discussion Thread
- Thread starter LionNYC
- Start date
Eh? If your goal is simply avoiding catastrophe I guess. Two eligible drafts in a row we lost a player who was flipped. No other team that lost a player in 2021 also lost one this time. Going back to the Claudio days, NYCFC has never made a deal with an expansion club to sell them a player for actual value with an agreement not to take one in the draft, a practice which is common and mutually beneficial. Nor have we ever made one of the deals where we pay the expansion club $250-400k for a player worth $700k-$1m while the original club gets $50k. Instead, twice in a row we're the team on the short end of hundreds of thousands of GAM value.
If this actually started with Toronto approaching us directly and it ended with Toronto paying someone else $250k while we get $50k that is not a win.
NYC is the only team to lose players in 2019, 2021, and 2024. The only other team to lose 3 in that era is Orlando who lost in 2020, 2022, and 2024, with Orlando being particularly effed because for some reason the 2022 expansion draft gave no immunity in 2024. Every other team in the league lost 0-2 players in the last five expansion drafts. It's not just a function of us being generally good. Seattle, Portland, Columbus and the Galaxy have all lost just 1 since 2019. LAFC lost 2. Philadelphia has not lost a player in eight consecutive expansion drafts. The Union last had a player taken in the NYC/Orlando draft in 2014. We finished 13th in the shield this year. Other teams have better and deeper rosters and lost nothing in this draft. NYC has not been good 2 years in a row, but somehow had one of the 5 most desirable and available players in a 29 team league, which is a consequence of warehousing a half dozen players who didn't contribute but we could not bear to lose because we overpaid for them.
None of that is good business by Lee. This year, at most, Lee figured out how to avoid an embarrassing debacle by taking a more cosmetically pleasing loss.
Not surprising in hindsight. I was very confused when we picked up his option. I agree very nice piece of business. Quite shocking Toronto paid 250k plus the 9th pick for him. He was not very good in MLS and has not been good in China.
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It is a win if the other option was losing Thiago and someone from our active roster. This seems like it was a wink wink deal not to take someone we actually value. Thiago has very little value either in MLS or in the worldwide market.
I guess my overall point is that yes, on a macro level we lost another player in the expansion draft when it's rare for teams to lose players, and that's a shame considering the small compensation we receive.
But on a micro level, the player we lost this time wasn't part of our plans and is worth very little on the world market. Perhaps if we didn't make this trade, we would have lost someone we actually care about, value, and have plans for in 2025.
This move, for all intents and purposes, doesn't change anything about our 2025 roster build whereas losing a guy like Tanasijevic would have taken a player off our 2025 roster.
But on a micro level, the player we lost this time wasn't part of our plans and is worth very little on the world market. Perhaps if we didn't make this trade, we would have lost someone we actually care about, value, and have plans for in 2025.
This move, for all intents and purposes, doesn't change anything about our 2025 roster build whereas losing a guy like Tanasijevic would have taken a player off our 2025 roster.
I get all that. I even mostly agree. Definitionally, though, losing $200k net GAM is a loss. Possibly a better loss than the alternative, but a loss is not a win. It's loss mitigation, which is less defensible if the circumstances that require loss mitigation are directly the result of poor prior choices.
I also get that you can't make avoiding expansion draft losses a central goal of roster construction. It's a blip on the chart. But NYCFC just experienced 2 of its 3 worst PPG seasons in its history, and the 2 worst excluding its own expansion year. So it's not clear what central roster goals we are achieving instead.
Assuming Thiago never intends to play in TOR and this is all just transactional, I can't imagine how bizarre this whole thing seems to Thiago and his team. From an outside perspective it makes MLS look very amateur IMO. They need to dump a lot of this nonsense if they want the rest of the world to start taking the league seriously.
Well they didn't lose $200k net GAM, they never had it to begin with. They lost, perhaps, a possibility to earn that GAM, but they gain the knowledge that none of the players on the active roster will be selected, especially considering some of the players we exposed have more value than $200k. There's an inherent value in protecting your entire roster. I would say the value in protecting everyone else is as high as the GAM they allowed to walk out the door.
As a fan, I would vastly prefer the team takes a financial hit than an on-field one. Sure they can be tied together in some ways, but I care a lot less about a loss in potential earned GAM than I do about the risk of losing a player we were expecting to rely on in 2025.
Hopefully, we at least get a coach announcement sometime soon, but I agree on the roster, doubt we do much.
There were rumors about Julian leaving, perhaps Talles gets sold, and maybe we move on Jovan if he doesn't want to be here. Those could lead to some signings. But other than that, yes I would expect to see virtually the same roster back next year.
Also a chance Sands goes to Europe, so we might see some movement and some signings. But definitely nowhere near as many as last year.
I still think that’s a lot of words for acceptable loss.
Also it’s like one of those math proofs that show 1=2 by dividing by zero but hiding it. We gave up a player for minimal return, and a freely agreed arms length transaction simultaneously set the net value of our Thiago/$50k deal at - $200k. No matter how you go on, that's negative $200k.
As for the certainty gain, we not only negated the possibility of a major loss. We also traded a possibility of no loss for a certain loss. You can’t ignore that half of it.
Finally, I see no reason to assume Lee/NYCFC engineered or had any role in this. It is announced as a deal between Toronto and San Diego. They were capable of doing it without NYC involvement. Nobody thinks NYC had a role in Charlotte/LAFC/Shradi. Nobody thinks all the other expansion flip deals involved the original team as a party. This is what it looks like: a deal between SD and Toronto. If the Crooks statement means NYC knew this was coming, Occam's razor says SD came to NYC and said "We're thinking of taking Thiago. Would you prefer to make a deal?" NYC either said no or they tried and could not reach agreement. All we did was pick up his option for whatever reason.
For the last time and I’m done. Take the last word. I’m not claiming this is a major loss. But pretending it is not a loss is contrary to reality no matter how much you try to explain it away. 24 teams did better than us. That’s only acceptable if we had a top 5 roster.
Jeremy Ebobisse & Jack Elliot are FA's, but we know the team isn't going to go there.
The new coach announcement is going to be an anticlimactic letdown.
My 2 cents worth(less).
www.mlssoccer.com
The new coach announcement is going to be an anticlimactic letdown.
My 2 cents worth(less).
MLS Free Agency Big Board: Who teams could sign this winter | MLSSoccer.com
MLS free agency opens this Thursday, December 12. A reminder that free agency eligible players are out-of-contract and option-declined players who are at least 24 years old and have completed a minimum of five MLS service years.
www.mlssoccer.com
Unfortunately, based on the typical approach of Lee and the NYCFC front office, any of the potential departures mentioned above will likely result in the roster spot remaining unfilled until the next transfer window, at best. I can't recall the last time a significant roster departure occurred and the front office had a well-prepared backfill plan executed within the same window as the departure.
In this case, I would love to see Carrizo or Shore graduate to the first team as a backup. Malachi is coming back and Ojeda can play either side and we don't know yet whether the new coach will view Santi as a wing or a 10.
More concerned about a Sands replacement if he moves. Haak has looked better at CB. We could get away with a Parks-Perea double pivot or go to a 3 ATB, but we don't have replacement on roster rn IMHO.
Hey NYCFC fans, who are our new players for 2025? It's the ones we already have but didn't get to play enough.
In the end-of-season comments, Lee said that he feels the roster is strong. I took that to mean minimal changes. Assuming things stay the same a lot is riding on the next coach to get more out of this roster than Cushing did. Personally, I think Cushing squeezed more wins out of this team than people realize and it's going to be tough for the next coach to match or improve our results as the roster currently stands.
San Diego FC: 2024 MLS Expansion Draft results | MLSSoccer.com
San Diego FC selected five players in the 2024 MLS Expansion Draft on Wednesday evening, further building their inaugural roster before their 2025 debut. Of the players chosen, three are slated to remain with San Diego and two were traded for assets. Clubs that have a player selected receive $50,000
www.mlssoccer.com
Emily Litella "never mind" embarrassing moment: San Diego gets a 1tst round, 9th overall Super Draft pick from Toronto for Thiago, plus $250k in conditional GAM, plus some part of any potential sell on. My bad for missing that, and mistakenly saying it was a simple $250k GAM. Undermines every point I made.
I don't know how the hell you value it. The pick is worth something. The conditional GAM is worth something. The sell on is worth something. Probably more than the $50k we got, but whether it is more or less than $250k is impossible to judge. This is mind boggling to me by SD given the hard GAM value received for other flips. Unless SD rates at least 9 college super draft prospects as highly desirable I can't make sense of this.
As for how this affects the NYC assessment - it's still bad we lost a player, especially with a very mid roster, but the $200k loss figure much less certain.
San Diego FC: 2024 MLS Expansion Draft results | MLSSoccer.com
San Diego FC selected five players in the 2024 MLS Expansion Draft on Wednesday evening, further building their inaugural roster before their 2025 debut. Of the players chosen, three are slated to remain with San Diego and two were traded for assets. Clubs that have a player selected receive $50,000
Emily Litella "never mind" embarrassing moment: San Diego gets a 1tst round, 9th overall Super Draft pick from Toronto for Thiago, plus $250k in conditional GAM, plus some part of any potential sell on. My bad for missing that, and mistakenly saying it was a simple $250k GAM. Undermines every point I made.
I don't know how the hell you value it. The pick is worth something. The conditional GAM is worth something. The sell on is worth something. Probably more than the $50k we got, but whether it is more or less than $250k is impossible to judge. This is mind boggling to me by SD given the hard GAM value received for other flips. Unless SD rates at least 9 college super draft prospects as highly desirable I can't make sense of this.
As for how this affects the NYC assessment - it's still bad we lost a player, especially with a very mid roster, but the $200k loss figure much less certain.
can't tell if using "mid" like a gen Zer or abbreviating "middle"... or both?
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