Minnesota, Miami and Carolina Players Released

As we reported earlier (Will The Timbers be Playing in the USL Next Season?) several teams called the TOA are going to be splitting off from the USL. The league president sent an email to all players on Minnesota, Miami and Carolina letting them know that they were released from their contracts. The links on the official USL Soccer Page to these three teams no longer work as well. Brian Wellman, president of the Railhawks, has a different viewpoint on whether the players are actually released:

It’s a little unfortunate, it may have been a bit of a posturing, scare tactic technique on the part of the league due to the nature of the negotiation. It was unnecessary and unfortunate. We met with our players today [Saturday, Oct. 3] for about an hour and a half to explain the entire situation. Our players are under contract with us, and they’re under registration to the federation whether we play in the USL, in a new league or partnering with the MLS, wherever we play next year, our players are under contract with us.

This could soon affect the teams playing in the final:

First of all, Vancouver and Montreal, they can’t be contacted at all because they’re still playing [in the USL playoffs]—even though they’re in the TOA, they’re in our situation. The day they stop playing, they’re going to receive everything we received because they’ve not renewed.That’s the only reason why [they didn't receive the same email as Miami, Minnesota and Carolina], because they’re still playing.

(Full interview with Wellman)

For the Timbers, this is an opportunity for Gavin Wilkinson to begin to scour those rosters and look for prospects. Of course that is only the silver lining. The downside is that the TOA currently has more teams than USL-1, so something is going to have to give.