More Espinoza Rumors

We're now less than 48 hours away from the end of the European transfer window for the vast majority of clubs (some countries have through 9/1), which means that Sporting KC fans only have to wait with bated breath a little while longer to see if Roger Espinoza will finish the season with Sporting KC or not.  Greg Seltzer, from No Short Corners spoke with Espinoza's agent today and got some information from him regarding the clubs chasing the Honduran's signature.  Wigan is the favorite per his agent and is looking to land him either now or during the January window when Espinoza is out of contract.

Wigan isn't the only English club that is interested in Espinoza though, there's another (unnamed) club that is apparently interested as well.  Espinoza has made it known that he'd like to play in England so Wigan and this unnamed club would appear to be the favorites to land the signature of the midfielder either now or in January.  Still there are other clubs interested to, the initial Spanish interest is probably still there, and there is apparently also interest in Denmark, Holland, Portugal, and Turkey.  There hasn't been this much interest in a KC player since Eddie Johnson was playing with the club before his move to Fulham.

This news though is a little different than what the team and even Espinoza have portrayed.  Today Peter Vermes said that nobody has contacted the team or the league about Espinoza, and Espinoza himself has said he hasn't heard any offers from his agent either.  This is all the fun of the song and dance that is the transfer window when a player is a target of multiple clubs.  This will all play out fairly quickly if Espinoza is going to move.  I'm still not sure he does this window though.  I think he's still more likely to leave in January on a free.

Hard Evidence of Name Change?

I was emailed a link to the MLS Rumors website a little bit ago, and an article about the Wizards rebranding to Sporting KC. The article claimed to have "hard evidence" of the rebranding. Curious to see what they came up with I took a look at the article, though I don't regularly visit that site for one reason or another. Anyway, I know there are a lot of people that boycott that site, so I figured I'd share their findings. From what they found out, on November 8th, MLS registered the domain "SportingKCgear.com" with Network Solutions. The actual sites SportingKC.com and SportingKansasCity.com have both been registered on GoDaddy as well, the site of choice for MLS.

The information basically confirms everything that I've been hearing in private conversations with people, and personally it sucks. I hate the idea of rebranding and I hate the idea of being Sporting KC. The main reason for that being that I feel nothing about the name, it's bland and generic, nothing in that gives me any thought of building a better identity in the city and the region as Robb Heineman has stated on previous occassions.

I will be booing the announcement on Wednesday when the Wizards are rebranded Sporting KC. Another rumor that has started making the rounds on Bigsoccer is that Omar Bravo will also be introduced that evening, a sly way to hopefully avoid the boos that I'm sure a few people will be throwing out when the announcement is made.

Below is the information on the registration of the site.

Domain: sportingkcgear.com
Cache Date: 2010-11-09
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Created: 2010-11-08
Updated: 2010-11-08
Expires: 2012-11-08

hk73c7av397@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com
Registrant:Major League Soccer LLC.
ATTN SPORTINGKCGEAR.COM
care of Network Solutions
PO Box 459Drums, PA. US 18222

Domain Name: SPORTINGKCGEAR.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Major League Soccer LLC. hk73c7av397@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com
ATTN SPORTINGKCGEAR.COM
care of Network Solutions
PO Box 459Drums, PA 18222
US
570-708-8780

Record expires on 08-Nov-2012.
Record created on 08-Nov-2010.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS95.WORLDNIC.COM 205.178.190.48
NS96.WORLDNIC.COM 206.188.198.48