The Designated Player Rule was officially launched in 2007, mainly as a way to bring David Beckham into the league. For the most part, the salary exception has been used on established players with prominent names. Juan Pablo Angel, Landon Donovan, Thierry Henry and Freddie Ljungberg all fit this mold. More recently, we've seen the rule used as a way of paying transfer fees for younger players. Alvaro Fernandez, Luis Angel Landin and, potentially, Fabian Castillo fall into that category. But the Vancouver Whitecaps' signing of Eric Hassli represents something quite different: an established player with almost no name recognition.
MLS 2011 Preview: Eric Hassli Is One Big Unknown
Eric Hassli
Position: Forward
Team: Vancouver Whitecaps
Nationality: France
Age: 29
Not exactly a household name, but Hassli does have an impressive resume with time in Ligue 1 and the top Swiss league.
| Team | App. | Goals |
|---|---|---|
| FC Zurich | 84 | 27 |
| Valenciennes FC | 21 | 2 |
| FC St. Gallen | 47 | 18 |
Sure, players similar to Hassli have come to MLS before. But most of them have been past their prime, or not as accomplished. Hassli comes to MLS at 29 years old and with significant European experience, having once scored 17 goals and assisting on 10 more in 27 Swiss league matches. Of course, if Hassli had been playing that well over a longer period of time, chances are a big European team would have picked up his contract.
In fact, that season (2008-09) came after a stint with Ligue 1 side Valenciennes FC and he has not come close to repeating it ever since. In his last two seasons with FC Zurich, Hassli has scored seven goals in 29 matches. It's not an awful strike rate, but also at least partially explains why he was available.
That he ended up in Vancouver was not much of a shocker, but plenty of people were surprised that it took at a Designated Player contract to bring him there. Hassli’s signing is definitely another experiment with the DP. How successful he is will likely determine how often its repeated.
What will be the biggest adjustment Hassli will have to make?
Hassli is a big player, know for his physical play (he's 6-foot-4), but few Europeans are used to playing as physical as MLS referees often allow. Maybe the best recent comparison is Blaise Nkufo, who is a similar size and spent several years in the Swiss and Dutch leagues before making the move to MLS last year. Nkufo was hardly bad, scoring five goals in 13 league matches, but he often talked of how hard it was to adjust to the style of play here. If Hassli can handle that, he should be just fine.
What kind of impact can Hassli have on his team?
Until the Whitecaps signed Hassli, their most obvious hole was proven goal-scorer. Even now, just one player (Atiba Harris) on their team has scored as many as 10 MLS goals in their career. Hassli is obviously the most accomplished goal-scorer on this team, and if he's able to perform at a leve similar to Nkufo over a 34-game season, that would translate to about 13 goals. That's might be enough goals to mean the difference between fighting for the No. 2 draft pick and contending for the playoffs.
What’s a reasonable expectation in terms of production and playing time?
Using that 13-goal figure seems to be a reasonable bench mark. Similarly accomplished players have tended to average about a goal every third game and Points Per 90 of about 1.00. For Hassli to accomplish that benchmark over, say, 30 games, that would likely mean something like 13 goals and four assists. To be sure, that would be solid production, but that doesn’t seem to be an outlandish place to put the expectations bar.
What’s the ceiling on Hassli?
At 29 years old, no one is expecting Hassli to make any huge leaps in terms of quality. The only question is how that quality translates to MLS. Hassli is about five years younger than Nkufo was when he joined the Sounders, so there’s reason to believe he’ll have an easier time dealing with the physical toll this league can take on a player. If Hassli can adapt, there’s no reason he can’t be a top 5 forward in this league, although expecting much more than that seems to be quite speculative.
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