Galaxy Has Abundance of Questions for Draft
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Major League Soccer holds its fifth player draft today and Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid finds himself in a bit of a quandary.
For a change, there are more than a few talented players available, several from UCLA, but how much does Schmid want to tamper with a winning lineup?
The Galaxy went all the way to the MLS championship game last season, and the team’s only real need is a replacement for striker Carlos Hermosillo of Mexico, who will not return.
MLS, which handles all player signings, has promised Schmid that it will try to find a top-class Mexican player to take Hermosillo’s place. The front-runner at the moment appears to be Jose Manuel Abundis, a Mexican national team forward who plays for Toluca in the Mexican league.
“They’ve had discussions that are ongoing,” Schmid said Friday. “After the draft, the discussions will take a more deliberate turn, a very serious turn, where hopefully something will be resolved.”
In the meantime, however, Schmid has to base his draft picks on the assumption that the league will be able to land Abundis or an equally high-profile player.
Abundis, Schmid said, would be a good fit with the Galaxy.
“You’re looking at a player who plays up front, who has proven he can score goals in the Mexican first division, much like Carlos has, but he’s much younger and still a viable player for the national team.
“From the type and style of player that he is, he’s a good fit for the other forwards that we have.”
PICKY, PICKY
The Galaxy has the 11th, 23rd, 35th, 47th, 59th and 71st picks, which doesn’t leave it in an especially good position to land the sort of player who could have an impact.
Schmid said the team has received several offers that could have resulted in higher picks but rejected them.
“At one point with the league, we had expressed an interest in [former UCLA defender] Carlos Bocanegra,” Schmid said. “So there’s a feeling that I would trade basically four starters, my first-born child and my first-round draft pick for the next 10 years for Carlos Bocanegra.
“Those are the kinds of deals people have come to me with. The answer is, while I think Carlos is a very good player, there are other players in the draft who can do as well as he can.
“There’s nobody that we’re going to sell the farm to get. I’m very happy with the composition of our team. What we’re trying to do is supplement and complement what we have.
“Defensively, there are a number of good players. So I think even with the 11th pick, we can get a young defender who has the potential to play in this league. The forward crop is a little bit thin.”
MACHON NOT AN OPTION
Midfielder Martin Machon, a talented and popular starter who had six goals and 14 assists for the Galaxy in 1998 before returning to his native Guatemala, is one of the players available in the draft.
Unfortunately, he will not be returning to Los Angeles.
“We’ve been told we don’t have any rights to him, that under the old regime Machon had been waived by the Galaxy,” Schmid said.
“I would have been very interested in Martin. The problem now is, it puts us in an awkward situation because if we draft Martin, that might stop the league from pursuing a player out of Mexico. If it doesn’t, then we’re one over on the [four-player] foreign limit.
“Then we would have to get rid of a foreigner and it couldn’t be [New Zealand’s] Simon Elliott because then we would be dealing with a salary cap issue.”
That leaves El Salvador’s Mauricio Cienfuegos and Costa Rica’s Roy Meyers, neither of whom the Galaxy is willing to trade.
“If I fight hard for Martin, then I have no chance of getting a player from Mexico,” Schmid said. “If I fight hard for a player from Mexico, they won’t give me a shot at Martin.”
These are the sorts of coaching headaches caused by the league’s single-entity structure, under which MLS controls all player movement.
DRAFT DODGES
Schmid and other MLS coaches were surprised to learn that it was up to them to figure out the draft possibilities.
Asked the biggest problem facing him in the draft, Schmid replied:
“Trying to figure out which guys are foreign and which are American. We got told by MLS that was our responsibility. I know some guys who played for the [U.S.] national team are probably American . . . but I’ve got 24 hours to figure out the rest.”
There are several foreign players who played at U.S. colleges and are expected to go high in the draft, among them forward Aleksey Korol and midfielder Yuri Lavrinenko of NCAA champion Indiana. Both are from Ukraine.
“I don’t think there’s a clear-cut No. 1 in the draft,” Schmid said. “I don’t think there’s somebody who is head and shoulders above everyone else.”
QUICK PASSES
With Schmid and assistant coach Ralph Perez in Florida for the draft, the Galaxy had an impressive stand-in coach for practice Friday: 1990 World Cup winner and 1996 European champion striker Juergen Klinsmann of Germany. . . . Besides Bocanegra, other UCLA players available in today’s draft are goalkeeper Nick Rimando of Montclair, defender Steve Shak of Cerritos and midfielder Sasha Victorine of Corona.
Galaxy starters Robin Fraser, Cobi Jones and Greg Vanney have been named to the 25-player U.S. national team for the CONCACAF Gold Cup Feb. 12-27 in Miami, San Diego and Los Angeles. The U.S. plays Haiti and Peru in the first round. . . . MLS has expanded team rosters from 20/21 in its first four seasons to 24 in 2000. Each team will be allowed 19 “senior” players and up to five “protected” non-roster players.
Marla Messing, under whose leadership the 1999 Women’s World Cup netted a profit of more than $2 million, has been named vice president of partner marketing for Broadband SportsInc. in Los Angeles.
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DRAFT DAY
The MLS 2000 draft takes place today. The first round draft order:
1. New York / New Jersey MetroStars
2. Kansas City Wizards
3. Columbus Crew
4. Chicago Fire
5. Colorado Rapids
6. Chicago Fire
7. Colorado Rapids
8. San Jose Earthquakes
9. Kansas City Wizards
10. New England Revolution
11. Galaxy
12. Washington D.C. United
Note: Earlier trades cause some teams to have more than one first-round pick. Barring trades before the draft, the Dallas Burn, Tampa Bay Mutiny and Miami Fusion have no first-round picks.
