Philadelphia Funyons

There was a bit of an off-hand comment from a user on the Soccer Insider this morning when Goff revealed the news that Josh Gros had been offered a position in the front office by Piotr Nowak and the Philadelphia Union.  The commenter b18bolo suggested that Nowak might also go after some of his other former players like Ben Olsen and Bobby Convey.

It may be five months away, but this has really got me thinking about the expansion draft for Philadelphia that will immediately follow the season.  Assuming that MLS will use the same rules as the past three years, we'll get to protect 10 players, but with United's surprising depth this season, that won't be enough.  How do you protect only 10 players when you have a solid 18-20 players who are key contributors?

Jakovic, Namoff, Simms, Olsen, Pontius, Wallace, Quaranta, Fred, Gomez, Moreno, Emilio…  I just don't see how any of those 11 guys can be left exposed, yet we only get 10 slots.  I can't picture any one of those guys playing in a different jersey next season.  And that still leaves Burch, N'Silu, Jacobson, Barklage, McTavish, Janicki, and Wicks.  That's scary.  No matter what, we're guaranteed to lose a good player in the expansion draft this year.

And don't even get me started on the TWO expansion drafts they'll have for 2011!