I'm not as skeptical as Luis about the Galaxy's chances to land Zidane, though I don't think Zizou is as excited to come to America as David Beckham. I'd say 50-50.
That's because after talking to Lalas, I realized how familiar his phrasing sounded - he said many similar statements about Beckham before Becks was signed. A lot of people dismissed it because of how they feel about MLS. Lalas would have had to scream in their face, "BECKS IS SIGNING" for them to believe it. They certainly weren't picking up on hints that the odds looked good.
Another reason I think it might happen is because Tim Leiweke is a pretty busy guy. Unless he happened to be in France on vacation, I think it's significant that reports have come out that he flew over to talk to Zizou. Leiweke makes things happen.
8 comments:
i think they are slightly better than 50/50 on the reasoning that for Alexi to be talking about it means it is near a done deal. i don't expect galaxy management to fess up to this until they have the DP slot in place. imagine how much more a DP will cost if everyone knows ZZ has already signed . . .
I'm fan Of Galaxy like you know but this is ridiculous, never Zinedine will come to LA, that's good like that !!
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Charly
All good except that LA does not have another DP option and with other teams starting to use them, they will probably be coming at a steep price if you want one.
LA does not have another DP slot and with other teams beginning to use them, the price will only become steeper. Especially with rumblings that Chivas wants one too.
chivas would be fools to ever use a dp. reason being, they could avoid the cost of trading for a dp by having the player sign with chivas mexico (no salary cap), then assign him to the chivas USA team with an additional contract that is below the 400k amount. and gues what . . . that is all legal.
Here's a question... why offer up the DP spot to ZZ? We all know that he'll be getting big bucks from image rights and from Adidas, so why not give him a normal pay slot. The MLS dough for ZZ is pride cash anyway, so just announce that he'll make $5 mil. total (or whatever is agreed between AEG-Adidas and ZZ) rather than announce his MLS salary.
This is a win-win deal for everyone. The Galaxy will easily make their money back on worldwide tours in the offseason, jersey sales and international TV rights. Make it happen!
Galaxy needs to get another DP slot to do this, and not only that, they would have to free up a lot of cap space for this to happen. LD, DB, and now ZZ, that would be $1.2 Mil of cap space used up!
And Chivas don't have a DP slot. I don't think they have much to offer to another team to get a hold of one.
Chivas is in a tricky situation because they would have to trade for another slot, for sure. They'd have to give up one of their good young players at least to get a DP slot.
The Galaxy, though, will have to trade for a spot anyway to get Landon. The way I see it, you might as well trade for it in April or May, rent Zidane for the rest of the year and then you still have the DP slot for Landon for next season. The team might be void of depth but you'd have probably the two most recognizable soccer players in the world with Becks and Zizou as well as the best American soccer player possibly ever. That's not bad.
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