Rumor: LAFC eyeing Portuguese midfielder Francisco Geraldes

Los Angeles Football Club announced the signing of their second Designated Player, forward Diego Rossi, on Thursday, but the transfer rumors keep coming, with Pro Soccer Talk reporting that the expansion team is looking at Portuguese midfielder Francisco Geraldes as their third DP for the 2018 season.

Geraldes, 22, currently plays for Portuguese Primeira side Rio Ave, on loan from one of the country’s giants, Sporting Club. Playing the bulk of his professional minutes to date for Sporting’s reserve side, Geraldes has gotten regular playing time on loan the last two seasons, first at Moreirense and then this season Rio Ave. He is also a Portuguese youth international, playing as high as the U-21 level to date for his country.

While LAFC need to fill out their roster, nearly every transfer rumor has some plausibility and this one is no exception. However, with LAFC having filled two of their DP slots already with Rossi and Carlos Vela, signing a promising youngster to the final slot would appear to run counter to John Thorrington’s assertion to reporters on Tuesday that more “big” signings would be coming. That statement did not specify whether LAFC would be adding more household names in the Vela realm or if being a DP itself qualifies as a “big” signing by definition. But this signing would feel a tad obscure to be considered big, although he could be the real deal on the field and/or LAFC could opt to pay down the deal with the plethora of Targeted Allocation Money (TAM) they’re sitting on right now.

So we’ll see. There are sure to be more transfer rumors for LAFC in the months ahead, and again, this one seems plausible but we’ll see if there’s more to it than that moving forward.

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