ezbeezy214
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Right I agree. In a back 5 with the ball, O’Toole pushes up to LW to make it a back 4.
2025 Roster and Transfer Discussion Thread
- Thread starter LionNYC
- Start date
ZYanksRule
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The offseason is going to start very fast. Figure this opaque organization won't announce stuff publicly tomorrow, but whoever the sporting director is has to tell the league our roster decisions tomorrow.
"Losing Conference Final clubs must submit exercise option decisions and all Bona Fide offers to the MLS League Office on the day after their final match of the postseason."
"Losing Conference Final clubs must submit exercise option decisions and all Bona Fide offers to the MLS League Office on the day after their final match of the postseason."
I am glad he can come back at the start, I was concerned he was going to be put all season and the team was not going to pick up his option. Hopefully, I didn’t jinx him.
I understand CFG can’t trade or force a player to transfer, but I would really like CFG to strongly encourage Magno, Jovan, and Julian to take a transfer and encourage one of these CFG teams to take these players on.
The team loves allowing coaches and players leave whenrver they fan. Now allow the fans to ship out players
ZYanksRule
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There's no reason NYCFC has to ask Magno and Jovan to do that. They can choose to sign players in those position. They are actively choosing not to, I assume because of the cost. There is truly nothing stopping them.
I believe if NYCFC is paying majority of the salaries while the player is loaned out, the team won’t be able to use those players allotted DP slot or U22 slots. So a full transfer frees up those benefits for the team.
ZYanksRule
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So this is from the MLS website:
Seems like a pretty good reason for the Club to insist they not pay the player's salary when out on loan, but who knows whether that is happening.
So ... Haak.
If we can shift Martins to TAM but the only way to keep Haak is to give him a DP contract, do we do that?
Or are we done with the DP at the back era, even if it means losing Haak on a free?
If we can shift Martins to TAM but the only way to keep Haak is to give him a DP contract, do we do that?
Or are we done with the DP at the back era, even if it means losing Haak on a free?
No. He’s a really good player, and it was malpractice for Lee/CFG to not have locked him in before the season. But, he’s not worth a DP slot.
HRB tried
Haak made $225K last season; there is plenty of room there to give him a very significant pay raise without going anywhere near DP levels.
For context, Sands makes $1.25 million, with TAM, he's not a DP. I don't think anyone could reasonably make a case that Haak deserves more than Sands, and I'd be shocked if Haak could find a team to pay him that much based on one season as an MLS starter and zero USMNT appearances.
On the flip side, it's absurd that Tana makes double what Haak does.
Not a terrible amount of decisions to make today, but there are some. Players with key options today are:
Out of Contract
Maxi
Haak
1 Year Team Options
Martins
Perea
KOT
Gray
Romero
Multi-Year Team Options
Tana - 2 years
A bunch of super draft pick players
The biggest decision that has to happen today is Tana, he's fairly expensive for a backup. Do you let him go to move that money towards keeping Haak?
The other one I hate to even put out there is Perea; he's one of the highest salaries on the team. Do they let him go instead of seeing if he can come back from the injury? It would be heartless, and I don't think they would do that, but it's a decision the mystery decision maker has to make today.
Out of Contract
Maxi
Haak
1 Year Team Options
Martins
Perea
KOT
Gray
Romero
Multi-Year Team Options
Tana - 2 years
A bunch of super draft pick players
The biggest decision that has to happen today is Tana, he's fairly expensive for a backup. Do you let him go to move that money towards keeping Haak?
The other one I hate to even put out there is Perea; he's one of the highest salaries on the team. Do they let him go instead of seeing if he can come back from the injury? It would be heartless, and I don't think they would do that, but it's a decision the mystery decision maker has to make today.
1. Maxi finally retires
2. We re-sign haak, but not today (so it'll say out of contract but they'll have a blurb about how they're working on stuff)
3. Tana is let go. I haven't been impressed and I'm sure neither has NYCFC at his price
4. All the 1 year options are exercised save romero
That's my guess!
This sounds about right to me, although we might exercise the option on Tana rather than let him go on a free. We paid a €330,000 transfer fee for him and we'll want to get some back.
Or, we might even keep him. According to Capology, he's on $270,000 per year. That's more than Haak, O'Toole and Gray (talk about imbalance) and a little less than Mitja. But as a raw number, that slots in okay for an experienced, physical, 600+ minute center back, especially if the Salary Budget is expanded with the calendar realignment.
If we want to clear space for, say, Max Murray or Prince Amponsah to get first-team minutes though, he'll have to go.
Marito
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Totally agree
ZYanksRule
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If the salary budget is expanded, then everyone else will be bringing in better players making Strahinja not good enough for what the league becomes.
I think we have to make roster moves with the idea that MLS is improving every year and if a guy struggles to find playing time now, what will he look like in two years when the league is better
Not sure where Capology gets their numbers, but the MLS PA has Tana listed at $338,750.00.
MLS Players Salary Guide | MLS Players Association
Every year the MLS Player Association releases our annual salary guide, listing each player in the MLS along with their current salary. We see this transparency as an extremely important part of our mission to support and protect the player community.
mlsplayers.org
To save folks a click, here are our top 12 salaried players. Also, since I haven't looked in a while, wow, Raul and Wolf look extremely expensive:
Also, not to keep harping on it, but Tana is another example of CFG having a secondary motive for player selection. CFG wanted Jovan, so they forced him into one of our U22 spots despite being a terrible fit, and we had to sign Tana as a support system for him. Tana has worked out fine as a backup, but when the rest of the league is picking players purely based on who will help them win, continuing to handcuff our player acquisition to these secondary CFG objectives puts NYCFC at a disadvantage.
ezbeezy214
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Tana isn’t a bad person to have but I’d rather see Murray take that spot anyway.
I don't know about struggling for playing time. Not everyone can start. You need backups, and that's what Tana was signed to be. I don't think there was ever a real question of him challenging for a starting role, although when Birk was struggling, Nick may have been tempted.
So, viewed from that perspective, Tana is by no means out of line. As it is, he started six games this past season. So, he earned his money.
The number from Capology is his base pay absent incentives and prorated bonuses. Add those in and you get the MLSPA number.Not sure where Capology gets their numbers, but the MLS PA has Tana listed at $338,750.00.
MLS Players Salary Guide | MLS Players Association
Every year the MLS Player Association releases our annual salary guide, listing each player in the MLS along with their current salary. We see this transparency as an extremely important part of our mission to support and protect the player community.
To save folks a click, here are our top 12 salaried players. Also, since I haven't looked in a while, wow, Raul and Wolf look extremely expensive:
View attachment 14259
I prefer to use base pay because it's an apples-to-apples comparison of value (incentives are highly variable, and front-end bonuses aren't a huge factor in MLS). But I totally get using the higher number since that's what counts against the Salary Budget.
Do we have any evidence this was actually the case?
To be honest, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if this is the way we go. He's bigger, younger, less expensive, better with the ball at his feet, and he can contribute to the attack in ways Tana can't on his best day.
On the Jovan front, we have the Bogert quotes about Lee essentially not being responsible for the signings that weren't in Lee's opinion, the best sporting decsisions. Couple that with the terrible fit in our system, and I think we have a pretty strong indication that Jovan was a CFG target and that one of our roster spots was used to hold. I also think if Jovan were an NYCFC pick, there would have been a bigger push to keep him around for another year with a new coach, instead of coddling him back to Europe the moment he started whining that he wanted out. No independent MLS club is paying an $8.5M transfer fee for a player and then just loaning them out a year later for nothing but salary coverage because that's "what's best for his development."
Regarding Tana a guy being signed from the same country as a very expensive, high-profile 18-year-old within days of each other. Seems like far too much of a coincidence to me. The team is also on record in the past saying that they intentionally try to sign players from the same region to help support each other.
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