Why FC Cincinnati will target South, Central America for building MLS roster

Pat Brennan | Cincinnati Enquirer

Show Caption Hide Caption FC Cincinnati, Nashville SC play to scoreless draw FC Cincinnati head coach Alan Koch discusses the club's July 7 draw against Nashville SC at Nissan Stadium.

No accounting of Major League Soccer history is complete without mentioning the history of prominent South and Central American players that have graced the league.

The same could soon be true for Futbol Club Cincinnati's own history.

To date, FC Cincinnati's featured just one South American player – Emmanuel Ledesma – on its all-time roster, but the club plans to seek out the coveted, young stars of South and Central America during the FIFA transfer window that opened Tuesday as it continues its personnel preparation ahead of the 2019 MLS season.

South American talent in MLS is nothing new. In the league’s early days, greats like Carlos “El Pibe” Valderrama (Colombia) and Marco Etcheverry (Bolivia) added a distinctive flair to the play.

Recent times have seen MLS clubs place more emphasis on the Americas south of the U.S. border, and the rationale is simple: Good, young players that can be had at reasonable price points, and serve as assets that can contribute immediately while also growing and developing with the club, FC Cincinnati Technical Director Luke Sassano said.

"When you look at the market and break down individual countries... some countries are producing players at a faster rate but also producing players that have made a better transition to MLS, and it's not always the big-money guys," Sassano said. "It's finding those players that are talented within the team but bringing them in at a cost-efficient level that makes sense, and that’s what’s been so enticing lately."

The renewed emphasis by MLS clubs in South and Central America is a noticeable shift away from spending big on the aging stars of Europe that carry bigger price tags for their past accomplishments.

More: Here's how FC Cincinnati plans to build its roster for the 2019 MLS season

More: FC Cincinnati sends Daniel Haber to Ottawa Fury on a free transfer

The trend is paying dividends up and down the league.

The 2017 season saw Atlanta United FC rise to immediate on-field success as an expansion team, and many considered South American talent as the driving force behind it.

One of those Atlanta players is Josef Martinez, a 25-year-old Venezuelan. He's the league's runaway leading goal scorer in 2018 (18 goals). Somehow, 26 players make more money than Martinez in terms of total compensation.

The joint leaders in assists are a 23-year-old Argentinian and a 26-year-old Honduran, respectively. Combined, they're making less than $950,000 this season.

Atlanta's Miguel Almiron, a 24-year-old Paraguayan pulling down the 12th-largest paycheck in MLS, leads the league in shots taken with 90.

Alberth Elis, a 22-year-old Honduran playing the Houston Dynamo, has the most on-target shots in the league, and he makes just over $650,000 – the maximum contract allowable for players that don't have a designated player designation.

The list of accomplished and relatively affordable South and Central American players goes on and on.

Sassano said FC Cincinnati would definitely be active throughout the southern Americas during the transfer window. He specifically noted Paraguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama and Costa Rica as countries of interest.

Being active in the marketplace is no guarantee for making signings and transfer deals, though.

FC Cincinnati needs to find players that fit what they’re trying to build and then beat out clubs from MLS and other parts of the world for those players.

"It's incredibly competitive for players in South America right now because as this league (MLS) has grown, there's more and more money that clubs are investing,” FC Cincinnati head coach Alan Koch said. “The league is allowing teams more access to real and fake money in terms of the structure to actually go out and get these players, so, it's very, very competitive to go and get those players. You have to maximize all the resources within your network.

Sassano also noted the prominence of established European clubs mixing it up in the South and Central America for the same young talent FC Cincinnati will target.

The key to successfully landing a coveted player from one of the countries Sassano mentioned will come down to FC Cincinnati’s network of scouts and agents.

It's a network that, by Sassano’s own admission, has room to grow. Growing it has been one of his main areas of emphasis as he's traveled the globe since FC Cincinnati was confirmed for MLS in May, he said.

But FC Cincinnati’s global network of connections in the soccer world as it exists today is just that: Global, and competitive in its own right.

As technical director for the New York Cosmos prior to coming to FC Cincinnati, Sassano had plenty of success pulling players out of South America.

Koch, too, has proven via his personnel transactions at FC Cincinnati that his network stretches to every corner of the globe

"At the end of the day, to get one player takes one successful contact,” Koch said. “If you have the right contact or the right access to the best players, you can get the best players. I feel very, very comfortable with who we have in our club who have the ability to contact and network across the planet.”