The post below this one includes a press release that arrived this morning from Major League Soccer, increasing doubling the number of designated player slots per team, and allowing the acquisition of up to three DPs per team.
I’ll try to get reaction from someone from the Sounders front office today. However, here’s what Sounders majority owner Joe Roth had to say on the topic last week, when he knew the new DP rule was coming but couldn’t yet announce it publicly:
“I think the fan base and the fact that we’re so popular here will always allow us to go out and get players. However many players the league will allow us to get as designated players or stretch out the salary cap in that way, we’ll go out and do that.”
Don,
Can you verify whether N’Kufo will be signed as our 2nd DP come Summer or if he is signed as a non-DP, thus allowing us to still looking to fill that 2nd slot?
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I asked Joe Roth about that last week and he said it was his understanding that Nkufo was going to be a max contract, not a DP. On the other hand, he said that at a time when the club couldn’t have a second DP. Now that they do, it will be interesting to see if some of the paperwork gets shuffled. I’ll try to get clarification on that today.
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Any ideas as to realistic players that we would look at bringing in as a second DP? I know there were a lot of rumors of us going after Henry before we ended up with Ljungberg, I would love to see that. He would be great up front with Montero. I would love to see that trio. But not sure who else we would look at. I have to imagine we would go after a player with a nose for the goal.
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Also, do we have any real knowledge of what the Sounders cap space is? I know they’ve got allocation money sitting around from last year, and they’ve got to have some space otherwise. I’d love to know where we’re at (and, actually, how much we signed Pat Noonan for).
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great news! looking forward to seeing what our FO does. They’re pretty smart and savy, so it should be fun and interesting following what they do with this new rule.
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Jays, while the Arsenal fan in me would love to see an Immortals reunion, Henry appears to be all but signed with NYRB.
Should be interesting, I guarantee our owners are in a buying mood. Drew Carey was talking about it the other day basically saying he doesn’t want to lose money but would love to make Seattle into the Yankees of American soccer.
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