So the Brian Ching saga in Montreal has come to an end. With the Impact's announcement on Thursday that Ching has been traded back to Houston in exchange for a conditional first-round pick at the 2013 MLS SuperDraft, the 33 year old striker has finally found his way back to the Dynamo club at which he has won two MLS Cups.
Interestingly, the response to the trade from pundits and Montreal's fan base has been somewhat muted, with many suggesting that the Impact should have held out for more than they received back in the trade.
Personally, I think Montreal did pretty well considering the situation that all parties were in. Furthermore, I think the trade is beneficial for the Impact for three different reasons.
Firstly, while the decision to select Ching in the Expansion Draft was a gamble, it ultimately ended up turning into a distraction for an expansion side that simply did not need the negativity on Ching's part, especially considering the dog eat dog nature of the MLS and the battle the team will be facing just to be competitive in their first season in the North American top flight.
Had Ching resigned himself to playing for Montreal in a positive fashion or if the Impact had been able to parlay him into a trade for Andre Hainault, the gamble would have been a fantastically huge success.
Neither scenario ended up coming to fruition and, thus, Montreal really had little choice but to send him back to Houston for whatever the Dynamo was offering.
After all, it's not likely that Montreal would have been able to trade Ching to any team other than the Dynamo due to the fact that the other clubs in the league would have been extremely hesitant to acquire a headache that the Impact was trying to divest itself of.
Ching had been clear that the only team he wanted to play for was Houston and he had even previously threatened to retire rather than uproot his family to another city.
In fact, it's not a stretch to speculate about how much even Houston wanted him back, at least at the salary he is on and given the fact that they made him available in the Expansion Draft in the first place.
Thus, Montreal got rid of a player who was casting a negative cloud over their preseason proceedings, received a draft pick back for him and opened up $400,000 of space under their salary cap.
And for those that are harping about the fact that Montreal got so little for their 1st pick in the Expansion Draft, it really did not matter where the team picked him given that Montreal was the only expansion team entering the MLS in 2012. There was no competition for the player and they could have selected him 1st, 5th or last and they still would have acquired him.
Once again, the decision to draft him first overall was a rational decision that made sense on a couple of pragmatic levels. On the one hand, it could be construed that Montreal was immediately highlighting how valuable it thought Ching was as a goalscorer and was sending a message to the player that they wanted him to be a core part of their team. On the other hand, it could suggested that Montreal had been trying to place a high value on Ching in order to help facilitate their much rumoured desire to acquire Hainault.
In some situations, it simply makes sense to trade a talented and useful player quickly for the benefit of team chemistry and dressing room harmony. That was the case for Montreal and the team will be better off for it.
That said, if there is one disconcerting aspect of the transaction it is that with Ching gone, Montreal is left with only two forwards (Justin Braun and Miguel Montano) with MLS experience under contract.
That simply won't get the job done in the rigourous and competitive environment that is Major League Soccer. Therefore, the Ching trade makes it even more paramount that the Impact put all their energies into signing a traditional goalscoring Designated Player.
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