One unhappy guy.


Ever since MLS utterly botched the Danny Szetela lottery, endearing themselves to no one in the process (certainly not the Szetelas, nor the Metros, who were faced with trading off multiple parts of a team emerging as the class of the East) I've felt truly bad for the kid - a guy straight out of North Jersey Polonia with a tough family background who wants to stay and play for the Metros (well, once he blew the whole going-to Europe thing, but hey). What happened on the day of the draft looked like nothing short of a public humiliation - some people apparently thought his discomfort at putting on that yellow Crew gear was funny, but I found it pretty hard to watch (you'll notice none of those spine-tinglingly somber, almost distraught pictures of him in crispy new Crew gear appear on MLSnet.com) . He should be part of the Metros right now, just as much as Freddy Adu should be part of DC United, if that's what it takes to keep him here in the US (in contrast, look at the great big pile of nothin' DC gave up to draft Freddy). But I'm not sure he'd be anything more than a sub this season, and considering how strongly the Metros hit the All-Star Break, with everyone, including usual whipping boys like Joselito Vaca and Tenywa Bonseu stepping it up, with Cornell Glen finally shaping up and rounding into form, and with the reports I'm hearing of team morale being extremely high, I don't want to see anyone being traded now. Not Vaca, not Bonseu, not Lisi, not anyone.
So I know I'm not alone in thinking this way, but according to the always-great Ives Galarcep (northjersey.com requires a registration, so go to bugmenot.com), Columbus is helping out immensely, by both being obnoxiously stupid with their trade demands (Guevara? Gaven?), and cutting off their nose to spite their face. Galarcep reports the Metros offered Lisi and Glen for Szetela, and the Crew owners ordered Andrulis/McCullers (a hapless, hanging-on-by-his-fingernails coach and an interim GM: how much more lame duck can you get?) to make demands that leave them looking idiotic AND hurt their team. It's a bonanza of stupidity out in Columbus, and as a Metros supporter I say thank you. Szetela may be a star someday and that's fine, but this Metro team looks ready now.

Consider that Eddie Pope just hasn't played up to his usual standards thus far in '04, that the most expensive and most pedigreed player on the team - Sergio Galvan Rey - is barely making the bench, much less playing any sort of role on the team, that Eddie Gaven is literally getting better and more confident every game, that the Mike Magee in midfield experiment, which I was not all that high on, looks like it'll work, that there's strength in depth (how many other teams can have a Fabian Taylor - who I hear is much-liked in the locker room - coming off the bench?) and you see that there's a lot of upside left.