Friday, March 03, 2006

How to Sign a Player in 5 Easy Steps

A few questions have been raised about why player announcements by a club might be a long time coming, so I talked to Steven Thompson, Director of Professional League Operations at the USL and asked him to outline in general terms the process between a club offering a player a contract and the official announcement.

The basic steps are these:

1 After a team has negotiated with a player and a contract has been signed, the paperwork is sent overnight to the USL.

2 The USL has to approve, sign off and send the contract paperwork back to the club. They also send a copy to USSoccer.

3 Once USSoccer has approved and signed off, the player signing is official and the team can announce if they want. Until then no one is supposed to release information about the "signing" (although sometimes news does leak out and "hands have to be slapped"!

4 Approval from USSoccer can take from 1-day (for a simple case of a US citizen who is a registered professional player) to anywhere from 1-week to a month (if the player is a foreign national or if there are other complicating factors)

5 After this it's up to the club and the USL follow the club's lead. Some clubs may release the news immediately a player becomes "officially signed", others may wait. One example is where a club is negotiating with maybe 3 or 4 players at one time and it's taking one player longer to get the OK. The club may elect to wait for the whole group of players to get the OK before issuing a press release.

posted by the timberlog at 2:27 PM

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