Sporting KC Acquire Allocation Money for Herculez Gomez's MLS Rights and International Spot

One of the great case studies of players' rights in MLS has finally reached a conclusion. Today, Sporting KC and Toronto FC announced that they'd reached a trade yesterday before the window closed that saw Kansas City send the rights of first refusal of Herculez Gomez to Toronto FC for allocation money.

Gomez, the 33 year old former US national team forward also signed with Toronto after the trade. Kansas City had held Gomez's MLS rights because they had made him a qualifying offer after his contract was up after the 2009 MLS season. Under the league's collective bargaining agreement at the time, because KC made a qualifying offer, they held onto Gomez's rights in MLS, meaning he could not play anywhere in MLS without Kansas City being compensated.

Instead, Gomez went to Mexico, where he had a successful career that saw him get back into the national team picture and earn a trip to the 2010 World Cup. He scored 37 goals over the course of 5 years with seven teams.

Gomez was never going to return to Kansas City after his departure in 2009 because of his feelings regarding Peter Vermes, Kansas City, their offer to him in 2009, and the team holding onto his MLS rights even though he was never going to return. The rights issue caused a lot of issues for Gomez, who spoke out about that fact on numerous occasions during his time in Mexico.  It seems in the end though that the league stepped in to help broker a deal between TFC and KC to get Gomez back to MLS.

Toronto and Gomez meet Kansas City tomorrow at BMO Field in league action, and while it'd certainly add to the story line if Gomez is able to play, and even more so if he were to score, I'm not sure he'd play just a day after the deal was done, but stranger things have happened.

UPDATE: Sporting KC picked up more allocation money today through a second trade. Kansas City sent one of their international spots that they were not currently using to the Colorado Rapids in exchange for allocation money. The international spot is only for this season and will return to Kansas City on 12/31/15.

Another good bit of business for KC as they weren't going to use all their international spots this season.

Harrington Trade Official, Aiyegbusi to Rentry Draft

It's been an extremely busy day in MLS circles today as the trade window opened up and teams started to prepare their teams for next year.  Sporting KC was active making a trade with the most active team of the day, Portland.  The rumored trade last night of Michael Harrington for allocation money came off, sending the 6 year veteran to the Pacific Northwest.  It'll be interesting to see what Kansas City does with the allocation money, but rumors are that KC could be busy the rest of this week with news as well. 

Harrington was the team's second most tenured player in KC behind Eric Kronberg, having been with the club since being drafted in 2007.  He scored the quickest goal in a debut, scoring just 3 minutes into his debut against DC United.  His record was topped by CJ Sapong last year.

Harrington finishes his career in KC with the 9th most minutes played in league play in KC history 11,633 in 149 appearances, tying him for 8th place with Mo Johnston.  He started 128 of those, tied with Josh Wolff for 9th.  In all competitions, Harrington played 13,276 good for 11th on that list, in 170 appearances, set for 9th place on that list.  Of those, 143 were starts, good enough for 12th on that list.  In his career, Harrington scored 5 goals for KC, but none since 2008.  In the past two seasons, Harrington has seen his minutes and appearances decrease due to the emergence of Seth Sinovic and Chance Myers.  Harrington started on 16 games last year, and appeared in 23 games.  This year it was even lower as Harrington only started 9 games and appeared in only 11, a career low for him.  With his $125,000 salary it's tough to justify that for a bench player.  And while it'd be nice to have an experienced veteran on the bench, Harrington has to be wanting to get himself more playing time as his career continues.  Good luck to him.

Also announced today was that the team will not be picking up the option on defender Korede Aiyegbusi.  The Englishman appeared in only 9 games, starting 2 over his 3 year career with KC, playing only 152 minutes.  This year it was only 1 appearance for a total of 19 minutes for Aiyegbusi.  He also made one US Open Cup and one USOC qualifier for KC in his career.  Aiyegbusi will go into the reentry draft, the first stage of which takes place on Friday.  Very few, if any of the players on this list will be taken in the first stage, the majority of the movement will take place next Friday in the second stage of the draft.

The departure of these two puts KC extremely low on the number of defenders on the roster.  KC still has their 4 starters, Myers, Sinovic, Matt Besler (who is currently out of contract), and Aurelien Collin, KC has only 3 other defenders on the roster.  Lawrence Olum, Kevin Ellis, and Kyle Miller.  All the appearances for KC between those 3 in competitive games belong to Olum, save 1, a substitution appearance for Kevin Ellis in the Open Cup last year.  There's no doubt though that there will be defensive depth brought in this offseason from one location or another.

Good luck to both Harrington and Aiyegbusi in their continued careers. 

Wizards Acquire Kamara

I complain about lack of movement and the next day, what happens? The Wizards make a move. Today (as I tried to post on Twitter, but apparently it didn't go through) the Wizards acquired Houston Dynamo forward, Kei Kamara for Abe Thompson and some allocation money. Kamara is joins the Wizards having scored 5 goals in 20 starts this year for the Dynamo. This is his fourth team in four years in the league. Kamara is currently a Generation Adidas player, but is in his 4th year of his first contract, which likely means it's the last year of his contract and his last year as a Generation Adidas player, meaning next year he'd count against the cap and against the Wizards foreign player allotment next season. Kamara made $65,000 this year and according to the above article was having trouble coming to terms on a new contract with the Dynamo. Still, Kamara brings size and some speed to the Wizards front line. Thompson heads the other way having only played in 8 games this season and fallen down the depth chart at the forward position. His one goal in his year plus with KC came this year in the Open Cup against Minnesota.

Will this move work out for the Wizards? That will remain to be seen, but hopefully the Wizards can turn around the recent form teams have had when they perform trades with the Dynamo, as usually the Dynamo are the ones that come out better in the trade. In the end, good luck to you Abe, and welcome to KC Kei.

Allocation List

The MLS transfer window is about to open up and that means rumors of players coming to MLS or coming back to MLS. Today, Steven Goff had rumors of 3 former MLS players returning to MLS. Danny Szetela, DaMarcus Beasley, and Stern John are all being rumored to returning to MLS. With these 3 potentially returning, the MLS allocation list could see a shake up. Four teams have already used their allocation this season, Seattle used theirs on Kasey Keller, Toronto traded their spot to Houston so the Dynamo could get Felix Garcia, San Jose got Bobby Convey, and LA grabbed Gregg Berhalter. With these moves, the Wizards are likely in 4th on the list, and the full allocation list probably looks something like this now. So the Wizards potentially have the chance to grab one of these players if Dallas, DC, or Colorado pass on 1 of these players (if they sign with MLS).

Honestly if this all holds true, I'm not overly interested in any of the 3, except maybe Szetela. The Wizards have already done plenty of work on the offense lately and neither Beasley or John would help enough to make them worth an allocation. I'd rather see the Wizards use their allocation on a defensive player.