LAFC star Carlos Vela acquires green card

Los Angeles Football Club announced on Wednesday star forward Carlos Vela has acquired a green card and will no longer count as an international player for MLS roster purposes.

Vela picking up permanent residency in the United States makes him the latest LAFC player to get that status, joining the likes of Eduard Atuesta and Diego Rossi. Now, LAFC have nine players who count as internationals — Jose Cifuentes, Danilo Silva, Adama Diomande, Mohamed El-Munir, Francisco Ginella, Diego Palacios, Brian Rodriguez, Eddie Segura and Kenneth Vermeer — and nine international slots, so they are compliant.

Obviously, if LAFC were to pick up another international player, they would need to drop a current international or get another international slot from another team. But the current roster is compliant on that count.

More news for this Thursday:

• Bradley says Vela is on level of Stoichkov, Salah: Bob Bradley is a big Carlos Vela fan, and he favorably compares the Mexican to two other players he’s coached — Hristo Stoichkov and Mohammed Salah. Those guys were/are pretty, pretty good!
• Celebrities at Sunday’s game: There was a lot of star power at LAFC’s game against Inter Miami. In addition to the LAFC celeb owners and fans, Inter Miami co-owner David Beckham sucked in a ton of star power, from his wife Posh Spice to Liv Tyler, to Gordon Ramsey, to Eva Longoria. No wonder tickets are getting to be so expensive!
• Cruz Azul asked to move CCL series: Cruz Azul asked Concacaf if they could move their CCL game against LAFC on March 12 to the 11th so they could have adequate time to prepare for their league game against Club América, but no dice, as Concacaf said no. We’ll see, but Cruz Azul could opt to rotate a bit in Los Angeles if they care that much about the league game and think they can risk it against the black-and-gold.
• Vela is MVP frontrunner (through one week): Recency bias hits early on, and voters’ desire to give awards to new people will hit at the end of the season, but on MLSsoccer.com Andrew Wiebe tabs Vela as the MVP frontrunner for 2020, through one week.

Today’s question: Yesterday we discussed the prospect of coronavirus potentially impacting LAFC games down the line. How do you feel about that? Let’s chat about that or whatever you like in the comments below!