Toronto FC cut Ivo, Bates, Blake and Mazzullo

very valid question. forcing me to actually dive into the rules for this sort of thing, as found here, and presumably still up to date.

http://www.mlssoccer.com/2011-mls-roster-rules

couple of relevant pieces to these questions.

first from section II C – superdraft

Unless claimed on waivers, a player who was drafted by a particular team through the SuperDraft or supplemental draft and did not sign with the League, is placed on that team’s "College Protected List" until the second December 31 following the draft in question, after which the team loses the rights to the player.

and secondly, from section II H-Waivers

A team may place a player on waivers at any time during the regular season at which point he is made available to all other teams. The waiver claiming period shall commence on the first business day after the League delivers notice to teams and shall expire at 5 p.m. EST on the second business day after the Waiver Period Commencement Date. The claiming period is 48 hours.

including

(v) A player who was drafted in the SuperDraft or supplemental draft, and who after a trial with the club is not offered a contract by the first Monday of June.

also, from section IV

DRAFTED BUT NOT SIGNED: A player who was drafted by a particular team through the SuperDraft or supplemental draft and did not sign, or who as of the first Monday in June is not offered a contract after a trial and clears waivers, is placed on that team’s "College Protected List" until the second December 31 immediately following the draft in question, after which the team loses the rights to sign the player.

So, the basic interpretation would be any other team in mls can pick those players up over the next couple of days, but if no-one does, tfc retains their mls rights until dec 31 2013, which would explain why bourgos was still technically our player.

The only bit of the rules specifically relating to home grown players states the following

(F) HOME GROWN PLAYER SIGNINGS

A club may sign a player to his first professional contract without subjecting him to the MLS SuperDraft if the player has trained for at least one year in the club’s youth development program and has met League criteria. Players joining MLS through this mechanism are known as Home Grown Players.

There is no limit to the number of Home Grown Players a club may sign in a given year.

so basically, we can sign them at any time without them having to go through the draft, even if as matt Stinson did they go off to university in between the academy and signing them.

when releasing them, players that we do sign would be treated same as others, we can waive them, and they go through the re-entry draft and become free agents, or to quote the “right of first refusal rules” again

OUT OF CONTRACT PLAYERS / OPTIONS NOT PICKED UP: Subject to the Re-Entry Draft rules, a team retains the right of first refusal to the player indefinitely only if attempts were made to re-sign the player.

That’s where things could become very fishy, what constitutes an “attempt to re-sign”, and who decides that?

as to what happens to those that we don’t sign, say some 18 year old who’s been in the academy for 2 or 3 years and we decide, sorry you’re not going to make it, best go play in the ncaa, I’d imagine we have first right of refusal, as described in the first bit i quoted, but probably with some kind of time limit, but the rules there don’t go into any details of that situation, so…not sure. dave?

Ivo, they asked him to play left back, he wasn’t too keen on that, and must not have done well.

bates pretty much completely missed my radar in between signing and release. don’t really think many of the supp. draft kids had much of a chance really.