Montreal took James Riley in the expansion draft today, then shipped him to Chivas USA for Gerson Mayen and Justin Braun. Montreal also worked a trade with Seattle, acquiring Tyson Wahl for allocation money.

Riley and Wahl are both defenders and both original Sounders coming in the 2008 expansion draft from San Jose and Kansas City respectively.

“It’s not surprising that James Riley was picked by Montreal,”

Sounders coach Sigi Schmid said in a press release. “He’s been our starting right back for three years and a quality player. We knew it would be a risk to not protect him. He’s a veteran who can step in and help a defense right away.”

Of Wahl, Schmid said: “Tyson has been solid contributor, earning more minutes with each season. We’ll miss his value to our team, but this trade enables him to be a full-time starter and the allocation money will help us maintain the high quality in our team.”

Montreal’s first announced pick was Brian Ching from Houston. The Impact also took former Sanna Nyassi, who was taken from Seattle in last year’s expansion draft.

His is the entire Montreal expansion list.

Reaction: Read more »

The Montreal Impact is expected to reveal its expansion-draft picks list at noon … although MLS often functions on a time zone all its own.

So who will the Sounders lose?

Perhaps no one … or at least no Sounders were included on this expansion “Best XI” list determined by New York Times soccer writer Jack Bell.

On the other hand, in three projections from MLSsoccer.com, two say O’Brian White and one says Patrick Ianni.

Reaction: Read more »

Here is the Sounders’ list of players protected in the Montreal expansion draft Wednesday:

Osvaldo Alonso, Brad Evans, Alvaro Fernandez, Erik Friberg, Jhon Kennedy Hurtado, Fredy Montero, Lamar Neagle, Sammy Ochoa, Jeff Parke, Mauro Rosales and Steve Zakuani. (Michael Tetteh didn’t need to be protected.)

That means these players are available to the Impact: Terry Boss, Servando Carrasco, David Estrada, Josh Ford, Michael Fucito, Leo Gonzalez, Taylor Graham, Patrick Ianni, Nate Jaqua, Roger Levesque, Bryan Meredith, Miguel Montano, Pat Noonan, James Riley, Amadou Sanyang, Zach Scott, Michael Seamon, Tyson Wahl and O’Brian White.

The club provided this quote from general manager Adrian Hanauer:

Given the fact we’ve lost three players to expansion drafts the past two seasons we are bracing ourselves for the possibility of losing someone. Despite those losses we have developed a deep squad and grown stronger. We couldn’t protect everyone, so some of those who contributed significantly to our success are bound to be exposed. It will be interesting to see how Montreal approaches this.

Here’s the full list from all MLS teams.

Reaction: Read more »

The protected/unprotected lists will be revealed today for the expansion draft that will stock the Montreal Impact on Wednesday.

Coach Sigi Schmid was asked about the Sounders’ though process in assembling the list: specifically, how much is just protecting the best 11 players, and how much is trying to anticipate Montreal’s philosophy and then maybe trying to sneak through some unprotected players you’d really like to keep.

His response:

Yeah, it’s a little bit of that. People always think protection is protecting your best players. And sometimes it’s not like that. The first year, the original understanding was that we didn’t have to protect DPs. So we actually had Sebastien (Le Toux) on our protected list. And then we were told we had to protect (Freddie) Ljungberg, so that became more of a positional decision and OK, we end up losing Sebastien.

Last year it was that we had heard an awful lot that Portland Read more »