The 2011 MLS Cup Final was last night, which means that the 2012 MLS year officially begins today. What’s an offseason?
The first of many steps of the MLS year is assembling the roster of the Montreal Impact. They’ll be picking 10 players in the MLS Expansion Draft on Wednesday. But today, they’ve just learned the list of 11 players from each MLS team that will be protected from the Draft, and the corresponding list of players that will be exposed and available for selection.
We’ve spent lots of time over the past few weeks scheming/predicting what list of 11 players that D.C. United will protect from Jesse Marsch and Impact. Now that the list has been revealed, we only get a day or so to debate/criticize it. The lists are as follows:
|
Protected Players |
Exposed players |
| Charlie Davies | Brandon Barklage |
| Dwayne De Rosario | Branko Boskovic |
| Dejan Jakovic | Blake Brettschneider |
| Perry Kitchen | Marc Burch |
| Chris Korb | Steve Cronin |
| Brandon McDonald | Austin da Luz |
| Chris Pontius | Stephen King |
| Clyde Simms | Devon McTavish |
| Joe Willis | Kurt Morsink |
| Josh Wolff | Joseph Ngwenya |
| Daniel Woolard | Santino Quaranta |
| **Bill Hamid | Jed Zayner |
| **Andy Najar | |
| **Conor Shanosky | |
| **Ethan White |
** These players are protected by virtue of their homegrown status.
The biggest name on the exposed list is Branko Boskovic. United’s lone designated player has shown lots of potential in his short MLS career, but played only four matches this season after suffering a major injury, and therefore bares a low risk of changing teams in the expansion draft.
On the other hand though, United elected to protect one of its other big names - Charlie Davies. Naming Davies to the protection list might give a slimmer of hope to United fans that the 11-goal scorer will be back for a second year in 2012.
The most surprising player left exposed though is veteran Santino Quaranta. The midfielder missed a substantial part of the season with a concussion, and had lost his spot on the depth chart to Austin da Luz, but was still a valuable contributor and locker room leader for the team. If the Impact are willing to take on his salary, Quaranta appears to be the most likely player for United to lose.
What do you think of the list? Any big mistakes? And who do you think we might lose?