Zambrano Gets Title, Tough Call
Major League Soccer’s first expansion draft will be held Thursday, which means that Octavio Zambrano’s initial task as Galaxy coach is clear.
Zambrano, who Tuesday officially had the “interim” tag removed from his title when he signed a two-year contract, has to protect as many of his players as possible.
Like the rest of the league’s 10 founding teams, the Galaxy has had to make a minimum of 10 players available so that two newcomers, the Chicago Fire and Miami Fusion, can stock their teams.
Zambrano and Danny Villanueva, the Galaxy’s general manager, elected to protect all five foreign stars--Jorge Campos, Mauricio Cienfuegos, Eduardo Hurtado, Martin Machon and Welton.
To that list they added Chris Armas, Dan Calichman, Robin Fraser, Cobi Jones, Greg Vanney and Jose Botello.
Eleven players, including starters Paul Caligiuri, Harut Karapetyan and Danny Pena and backup goalkeeper Kevin Hartman, are unprotected.
Under MLS rules, teams cannot lose more than three players in the expansion draft, and for each one they lose, they can remove a player from the unprotected list.
Zambrano said deciding which players to make eligible for the draft was “one of the toughest decisions I have had to make. It was painful to tell players that they were not going to be on the protected list.
“But . . . those are the rules and we have to comply.”
He said he expected to lose two players, but did not rule out trades that might bring one or both back to Los Angeles.
Pena, for one, has said he would rather retire from MLS than leave Southern California. Having successfully sued the league to be placed in L.A., Caligiuri, too, is unlikely to be going anywhere.
Reports out of Mexico have suggested that Campos has become disenchanted with MLS and might not return.
Villanueva discounted that idea Tuesday.
“I think the fact that we protected him and he is under a four-year contract with a fifth-year option speaks for itself,” Villanueva said.
But if Campos does leave, the Galaxy would quite happily put an American in goal and move to acquire a foreign striker to complement Hurtado.
