By BRIAN LEWIS
I know a lot of you Red Bulls fans have had questions regarding the status of young prospect Matt Kassel, the gem of the club’s youth academy. SBI did a good job summarizing the situation, and what I’ve been told mostly matches what my man Ives reported _ mostly, but not exactly.
A league source told me earlier today that the Red Bulls are NOT in a use-it-or-lose it situation, ie, kind of like your vacation time. The have right of first refusal on the University of Maryland freshman, at least from an MLS perspective. The league is willing to offer him a Generation adidas deal, but the Red Bulls didn’t want to commit to that last year because they wouldn’t be able to use that mechanism on another academy product until Kassel graduated the program: Think two or three years.
Now if Kassel wants to bolt Maryland for MLS, and the Red Bulls instruct the league to sign him to a Gen adidas deal, it’s a done deal. But if the Red Bulls chose not to bring him in right away, the league wouldn’t just up and sign him until asked to by either the Red Bulls or a SIGNIFICANT number of clubs.
In short, Chicago couldn’t just decide to pilfer him out of spite, or Columbus couldn’t just put in a discovery claim on him, and he wouldn’t just go into the 2009 draft. There would have to be a host of teams clamoring for his services, which I’m told is NOT the case at this point. And even if that changed, and a bunch of teams told the league they wanted the midfielder, even then the Red Bulls would STILL get right of first refusal, a chance to take him themselves.
And, on a completely unrelated topic, I’ve been told there was some interest from league teams in Ghana star Stephen Appiah. But apparently the ex-Juventus midfielder never got to the point of negotiating with MLS.