Thursday, March 29, 2007

Eddie Johnson to Boca Jrs.?

So apparently Boca Jrs. are interested in signing Kansas City Wizards forward Eddie Johnson. According to this article, and some reports on ESPN Deportes and GolTV the Buenos Aires club is interested in signing the striker. Here's a basic translation of it thanks to a poster on bigsoccer. The basic gist of it is that the club is trying to expand their worldly appeal by signing different players. The club in the past has brought in players from Asia in hopes of increasing their appeal, and are now turning towards the American market.

Apparently while the Wizards were down in Argentina for preseason this year, Johnson impressed in training down there. This move wouldn't be to play in the first team. This is a front office move by the Boca front office to improve their marketing. The other players that have come to Boca have all sat on the bench. It's a difference between the front office policy and the coach's policy.

From the perspective of a Wizards fan for this season I'm completely against this move. While EJ has been an incredibly annoying and frustrating player in his time in KC, he's miles ahead of any other talent at forward except for Scott Sealy. Getting rid of EJ would leave our starting forwards as likely Sealy and Ryan Pore. Call me crazy but that doesn't exactly strike me as a forward line that will strike fear into the hearts of defenders and goalkeepers around the league. True they had the same number of goals last season, but comparatively who would you rather have up top, Ryan Pore or Eddie Johnson. I'd take Johnson any time. Pore is a good off the bench backup forward, I don't see him as an everyday starting forward. With where we are currently at player wise it's doubtful we'd bring in anyone to take Eddie's place that would play forward, and what's already looking like a bleak season will get even bleaker.

Keep Eddie in KC, as Wynalda said last night, allow a coach like Curt Onalfo, a player's coach, to have a shot at Eddie and turning him around. You can already see some changes in his game just by watching the US game last night.

In some other interesting news, the Wizards now have competition on opening day on April 25 against Toronto. Starting at the same time as the Wizards game, is an MU-KU baseball game at Kauffman Stadium. While the baseball game isn't gonna be extremely crowded, it still is piss poor scheduling by someone in scheduling these both to start at the same time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gist
The main point or part


Jest
1 : an utterance (as a jeer or quip) intended to be taken as mockery or humor
2 a : PRANK b : a ludicrous circumstance or incident
3 a : a frivolous mood or manner (spoken in jest) b : gaiety and merriment
4 : LAUGHINGSTOCK

Kurt A. said...

idiot:(n.) above commentor

interesting note about the mu-ku baseball game -- as a student at mu i can attest to the large following mu baseball has been getting (a 14 game win streak certainly helps). i would imagine a fair showing of fans will be in attendance for the game, though somehow it is a non-conference game and won't affect tournament seedings.