Originally Posted by
Oldtimer
Donovan's wanted to go for a while, and he's wanted in the EPL after his last stint there. LA didn't want to let their poster-boy for American Soccer go for the longest time, but he can leave soon on a free transfer, so they should be willing to at least get a few bucks for him now (AEG, a company very much like ML$E in character, although much more competent on the sports success end, knows where the bucks are).
There's no conspiracy, it's very obvious what will happen.
(1) Donovan is sold.
(2) LA receives a transfer fee, let's say it's a couple of mill.
(3) LA get's 2/3 of the transfer fee, MLS get's 1/3, per league policy.
(4) Per league rules, LA can use $500k of the transfer fee as allocation money.
(5) ADP gets signed, $175k (half season charge for a DP) gets paid from the allocation $$$ from Donovan, and LA still has $325k that they can use towards signing someone else at a later date.
No need for favouratism, no need for special magic allocation money.
Also, to anyone who thinks that it's somehow ML$E's fault that a player like ADP won't come to Toronto, well it's time to wake up to reality. We all like T-dot, it's our home after all, but the rest of the world sees Toronto as a pretty boring place. Montreal is a whole lot more attractive than Toronto, and even they can't attract ADP, even with Joey's Italian connections and huge personal wealth.
Discussions about the BMO Field stadium deal, and how ML$E somehow hates us are just not relevent. ML$E would love to get someone like ADP, the revenue he would generate just from Toronto's Italian community alone would easily pay his salary... it's much more economically justifiable than someone like Frings.
We would easily get the big-name players... if we weren't such a relatively boring place to go.