Major League Soccer’s winter transfer window closed with a bang on Wednesday, with Columbus Crew SC trading 2015 MLS MVP finalist Kei Kamara to the New England Revolution for a conglomeration of MLS mechanisms, including Target Allocation Money, General Allocation Money and draft picks. Real Salt Lake was public in its pursuit of players to improve the roster, but opted instead to wait for the summer transfer window, which opens on July 4. We caught up with RSL General Manager Craig Waibel for a quick Q&A about the close of the window and how RSL approaches the summer window.
Q: How would you summarize the close of the winter transfer window?
Waibel: “Over the last four or five months we’ve been on an exhausting search for a couple of players but in the meantime we’ve had other players perform very well. Over the course of the evolution of a team and a roster and of certain players, we have to evaluate and reevaluate. It doesn’t mean we have put anything to the side. We’ve worked diligently up until the last remaining minute to try to improve the roster, which I will continue to do. My job is to always challenge the status quo of the roster and try to improve it – no matter how good it is and how much we love it. There will be times where we make changes and times when we can’t improve it. This is kind of in between. We had opportunities to pursue to improve our roster and none of them came to fruition unfortunately. Now we will optimistically look towards July and figure out how to make one or two or three moves to make this team a championship caliber team for the second half of the season.”
Q: The names that you were looking at before – are those names that you will continue to pursue in July or do you now look at a whole new list of names?
Waibel: “We will continue conversations with one of them that have kind of been ongoing for the last four or five or six weeks. Contractually speaking, we thought there might be a chance to bring in the player early and it didn’t work out. So now as we move towards July we have to reevaluate whether that player is the single best option that we have moving into the July window as opposed to closing it before May 11. So we will continue to talk to one of the players that we’ve been pursuing, but the pool now grows and we reopen the search much, much bigger because there are a lot of players going out of contract. The summer window, for the rest of the world, is a very, very busy time. The winter window for us is the busiest time. Unfortunately, for the rest of the world, most of their contracts expire in the summer. We’ll take about 48 hours to catch our breath and then we’ll be right back on it for the next seven weeks while we continue to improve as a group here.”
Q: Last summer, Juan Manuel Martinez came here and made an instant impact. Are you looking for a guy who can make that kind of impact right away?
Waibel: “We’re in a different situation financially. Juan is a Designated Player and we already have ours. We have our TAM players. We’re very happy with our Designated Players and our TAM players. I do think we have some positions and some depth in positions where we can improve. The focus will be on challenging the status quo and improving the overall quality of the roster. I don’t think we’re going to magically pull a curtain in eight weeks and make five changes and have all of them be world class players. But we do have the opportunity over the next four to five weeks, if we find the right player, to improve our roster. We do have the budget that allows us to improve our roster, but it is not by any stretch of the imagination an unlimited number in terms of a Designated Player or a TAM player.”
