November 24, 2008

The San Jose Earthquakes officially announced today the list of the 11 players they are protecting.

To make things simple, next Wednesday (Nov. 26) at 10am, the new expansion team, the Seattle Sounders, will pick 10 players of their choice among all the unprotected players in the League. They can only pick one player in each team and each team can protect 11 players.

Things are made a little more complicated by the fact that, among the 4 international players (Darren Huckerby, Francisco Lima, John Cunliffe and Scott Sealy), only one of them can be made available, meaning that 3 of them must be protected, which leaves only 8 spots for the rest of the team. Knowing that Francisco Lima and Scott Sealy are not sure of coming back after the off-season (Sealy has publicly said after the last game of the season that he would go to Italy and The Netherlands on trial and hoped to stay in Europe and, according to Frank Yallop at the end of the season, Lima was not sure he wanted to stay in MLS), we expected one of them to be unprotected...It will be the young English forward, John Cunliffe...Maybe a way for Yallop to show Lima and Sealy that he counts on them.

The biggest surprise in the list that has been published today is Ronnie O'Brien being unprotected. Choices had to be made. The Earthquakes probably think that O'Brien's salary will stop the Sounders who may want to concentrate on younger players. It is a risky choice, unless San Jose has decided it's time to move on and to give Salinas his chance.

Other unprotected players who had an important role last season: Ned Grabavoy who never really gave satisfaction, Eric Denton who shouldn't be Freddie Ljungberg's team's priority, Kelly Gray, whose polyvalence could attract the expansion team and James Riley, another young, versatile and promising player.

The San Jose Earthquakes also announced today that Jovan Kirovski has been traded to Los Angeles Galaxy in exchange of a conditional draft pick.

Thierry Heumann (email)

Protected players	Unprotected players
- Alvarez, Arturo - Cannon, Joe - Cochrane, Ryan - Corrales, Ramiro - Garcia, Nick - Hernandez, Jason - Huckerby, Darren - Johnson, Ryan - Lima, Francisco - Salinas, Shea - Sealy, Scott	- Arce, Miguel - Ayres, Jay - Cunliffe, John - Denton, Eric - Ghebru, Michael - Glinton, Gavin - Grabavoy, Ned - Gray, Kelly - Gustavson, Michael - Hatzke, Matt - O'Brien, Ronnie - Riley, James - Roberts, Jamil - Smarte, Adam - Somma, Davide

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