Chivas USA continues shake-up, sends Shalrie Joseph to Seattle

Chivas USA continued its off-season garage sale Tuesday — no offer, reasonable or unreasonable, will be refused! — when the Major League Soccer team sent former all-star midfielder Shalrie Joseph to the Seattle Sounders.

Joseph is the 12th first-team player the team has either traded or declined to re-sign in the last 3 1/2 months. And Chivas was so desperate to get rid of him it also sent Seattle the team’s natural second-round picks in the next two MLS SuperDrafts. In return, Chivas received the Sounders’ No. 15 allocation ranking, leaving Seattle down a designated player slot and taking a big cap hit.

Joseph, a 10-year MLS veteran from Grenada, came to Chivas last August in the final deal brokered by the team’s old front office. Management, like the team’s roster, has been overhauled in the off-season. The 34-year-old Joseph had two goals and an assist in 12 starts but never played in a victory with Chivas, which went winless in its final 14 games of 2012 and failed to reach the playoffs for the third straight season.

Mexican businessman Jorge Vergara took over the team in August has been remaking Chivas USA in the image of its Mexican cousin, Chivas de Guadalajara, which is also owned by Vergara.

In more than a century in the Mexican League, Chivas de Guadalajara has never used a non-Mexican player. So part of Vergara’s strategy with his MLS team has been to bring a Mexican style of play as well as add more Mexican and Mexican-American players to the roster.

And the new formula has shown early promise, since Chivas was unbeaten in six exhibition games before Tuesday night’s match with South Korean side Gangwon FC at Cal State Fullerton.

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