Friday, February 02, 2007

Wizards After 2 Guatemalans?

A lot has been made of new Wizards coach Curt Onalfo and technical director Peter Vermes taking a trip down to South America to scout talent for the Wizards for the upcoming season.

Well the players may not be from South American, but the Wizards are being linked to 2 players from CSD Municipal in the Guatemala National League. Those 2 players both have past ties to Major League Soccer. The first one was mentioned on Red Deportiva, which stated that Mario "Loco" Rodríguez looked to be on the
verge of signing with the team. In 2005, "Loco" played for the Columbus Crew, playing in 19 of the teams games, starting 15, and scoring 1 goal. Last season, he played was on loan to USL-1 side, Miami FC. With Miami, "Loco" scored 7 goals and had 4 assists in 18 games.

The second article on this situation was on guatefutbol.com, which discussed "Loco," but also discussed another MLS Alum, Guillermo "Pando" Ramírez. "Pando" is best known for scoring the game winning goal in overtime of the 2005 MLS Cup Final between the Revolution and the LA Galaxy, who "Pando" was playing for. In that season with the Galaxy, he scored 2 goals and seemed to be an imitator of Fransisco Gomez, putting the ball into row Z more then
on goal. The article quotes Onalfo saying that he's gotten a chance to see each play while with the US National team and sees them fitting in well with the Wizards.

Personally I'm against signing "Pando" and I don't know enough about "Loco" to make an informed decision. LA Galaxy fans have told me on a few occasions that if only Sampson had played him in the middle he woulda done better. (One, two, three) But in the article I linked above, Onalfo says he sees "Pando" on the left side of the field, meaning he'd be right back where Sampson played him. Not only am I against it because of his poor play on the left side with
the Galaxy in 2005, but mainly I'm against it because of the price tag that he would likely come with, $270,000 transfer fee for the player according to the article.

With the scouting trips that Onalfo and Vermes went on, Wizards fans were expecting new faces, not rehashed MLS players.
Here is a picture of both players, "Loco" is on the left, "Pando" is on the right.

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