MLS’s Silly Season In Full Swing: Assessing The Foreign Rumors

It’s been known for some time that Sporting Kansas City was close to signing a French player. Andy Edwards of The Daily Wiz now believes that player is 24-year-old French defender Aurelien Collin.

Edwards did his due diligence in finding out all he could on Collin, who is currently playing for Portuguese First Division side Vitoria.

The one-time Ballon d’Or winner has somewhat fallen out of favor in Milan, where he hasn’t started a Serie A match since Oct. 16 and hasn’t scored a regular season goal all season. That five-match stretch has included three straight in which he didn’t play.

The main stumbling block - considering money is no object at this point - is whether or not he’s willing to come to MLS. Ronaldinho is just 30 and is reportedly drawing interest from LIverpool, as well.

The two teams to which Keane has been most prominently linked are the Whitecaps and EPL side Aston Villa. Assuming both teams have interest, it’s hard to see MLS outbidding an EPL side for a player with Keane’s relatively meager namebrand.

As good as Keane has been, he scored 28 goals in 43 matches as recently as 2009-10 season, he’s not particularly well known outside of soccer circles. His current salary of about $3 million a year would put him among the top four paid players in MLS, all of whom had considerably more name recognition. Tack on the possibility of the league needing to pay a significant transfer fee, and this starts to feel more and more like wishful thinking on the part of MLS followers.