Today MLS announced the 2009 Expansion rules.
Teams can protect up to 11 players from the Senior and Developmental Rosters. Retired players do not have to be protected. Generation Adidas players that do not graduate in 08 do not have to be protected – Roger Espinoza and Chance Myers. Seems that so long as Claudio Lopez, because he’s a DP, does not have a no-trade clause, then we may not have to protect him. But since he’s also an International player, and since KC has 4 Internationals, we can only make available one of them. So that means, at least I think it means, that we will be protecting Lopez, Souter and Trujillo. Leaving Marinelli unprotected since he’s not coming back anyway. The sucky part is that Trujillo has to be protected and he might not be back either. Teams can only lose 1 player. There will be 4 teams that will not lose anyone as Seattle can only take 10 “draft” players.
Here’s the list I see KC giving:
1) Claudio Lopez, 2) Kevin Souter, 3) Ivan Trujillo, 4) Davy Arnaud, 5) Jimmy Conrad, 6) Herculez Gomez, 7) Micheal Harrington, 8 ) Jack Jewsbury, 9) Josh Wolff, 10) Jonathan Leathers, 11) Tyson Wahl or Aaron Hohlbein
Sorry, I couldn’t decide between Aaron or Tyson. So, if you read that list you will not see Kevin Hartman or Eric Kronberg. Well, Seattle already has Keller on their roster. So I doubt they’ll take Hartman. Though they could take Kronberg if Chris Henderson likes him from his time here as assistant coach. But I’d bet if they took a KC player it would either be Wahl or Hohlbein. I also didn’t list Kurt Morsink though I really wanted too. If not for the rule about “# of Internationals minus 3″ that a team must protect, I doubt we’d protect Ivan Trujillo.
Anyway, here’s who’d be left unprotected: Either Wahl or Hohlbein, Kraus, Marquess, McKenzie, Pizarro, Pardo, Marinelli, Morsink, Pore, Thompson, Zavagnin, Hartman, Kronberg, and Watson.
Even if no players are taken I doubt that these guys will be back next season: Pore, Kraus, McKenzie, Pardo, Pizarro and Watson.
Leave your opinions 
OG
