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Chivas de Guadalajara held a press conference Thursday evening, and Mexico-based journalist Tom Marshall covered it, filing a report along with Chivas USA beat writer Blair Angulo for MLSsoccer.com on the impact for Chivas USA. Essentially, Paco Palencia, the front office member of the organization who worked most with Chivas USA, has been shipped down to Guadalajara to take over the sporting director position there, while vacating that position with Chivas USA.
The change means that in addition to no longer working with the Amerigoats, Palencia will not become Chivas USA's coach, as had been reported in recent weeks in the Spanish-language press.
The article indicates that it remains unclear if Jose Luis Real will return to coach Chivas USA in 2014 or if somebody else will take over. However, there were a few choice quotes from Palencia and overseer Dennis te Kloese:
"This year for Chivas USA was one of transition," te Kloese told the assembled media. "The rules with the salary cap previously provided a lot of difficulties and we took time to reorganize."
On one hand, he's right in that the salary rules are very complex and can even trip up experts from time to time. On the other hand, Jorge Vergara did technically own this team even before this year, right? So he should have put people in charge who knew something about how the system worked, right? And of course, Chivas had far and away the lowest payroll in MLS in 2013, so I wonder what the difficulties were. Other than the Shalrie Joseph mess, it appeared to be slash, slash, slash the payroll.
"More than focusing on the players that are leaving, I think we should focus on those that are staying like Carlos Bocanegra, [Erick] 'Cubo' Torres, who came after we took over control, Carlo Chueca, Bobby Burling and Dan Kennedy."
That was also from te Kloese. I think among the issues in that statement is the presumption that any of those players listed will indeed remain with the team for any real length of time. Since Chivas have had about five rebuilds in four years, how can we know which players will be staying from month to month?
But don't worry…players are on the way, says Palencia, who doesn't have to worry about Chivas USA anymore:
"We've now got everything well organized there," he told reporters. "We have the players that are going to come. We obviously can't announce them yet because the rules don't allow us to until after the MLS Cup."
Players are coming! That is a given, since Chivas USA cut 10 players Thursday. Notice that unlike Toronto FC, who love teasing "big" player acquisitions that seldom come to fruition, Palencia is stating facts. Players are coming. No word on if they will be good or not. Again, like te Kloese's comments above, Palencia is being honest, just stating the facts. But it would be great if there was a bit of excitement, right? Instead of just, "New players will replace the old players, wash, rinse, repeat," a little vigor would be cool, no? Or maybe these will just be new players, with no appreciable increase in quality.
But I'm getting way ahead of myself here. Palencia worked for Chivas USA for a year, now he's gone. No word on who will be Vergara's point person in California, or who will be coaching the team. We'll stay on top of the news as we find out.
What do you think? Leave a comment below!