By Ridge Mahoney
Senior Editor
With 27 players and a few staff members, Kansas City coach Curt Onalfo and technical director Peter Vermes left Monday night for a two-week training stint in Argentina.
Missing the trip is forward Yura Movsisyan, who because of his legal status and pending issuance of a visa cannot leave the United States. Movsisyan, taken in last year’s SuperDraft with the Wizards’ first pick, was born in Azerbaijan, considers himself Armenian and holds a German passport. He played in 10 games for Kansas City last year, logging 221 minutes without a goal or an assist.
“It’s very disappointing he won’t be able to travel with us,” says Onalfo of a trip that will include six matches while the squad is based in Buenos Aires. “He has some travel issues that he’s working through, but he’ll be pushing the envelope to be a starter, if not, a guy we look to come off the bench.”
There will be plenty of competition at forward nonetheless, with a seemingly revived Eddie Johnson emerging as one of the preseason’s main themes.
“Eddie Johnson has come in obviously very fit from being with the national team and he’s been very, very dangerous,” says Onalfo, who worked with Johnson as an assistant coach on the U.S team. “He’s been playing very aggressively and we’ve been telling him, kind of harping on him, that he needs to take risks and be dangerous and be hard to play against. He really has been, so the early signs are good.
“Eddie playing well is like adding a new player. He was a non-impact player last year, so the fact he’s played well in preseason is encouraging, we’ve just got to continue to stay on him and give him the structure that he needs and create a competitive environment, which we’ve done.”
Upon its return from Argentina, KC plays Columbus the last weekend of March and Seattle of the USL the following week before opening April 14 at RFK against D.C., for which Onalfo played four games in his MLS career. Kansas City is the bye team for the opening weekend (April 7-8) of the regular season.
In Argentina, Kansas City will play on four match days, with two of the days consisting of a game for the first team and another match for the reserves.
“We didn’t have any of our guys play 90 minutes until three weeks into preseason, based on the fact we felt we had the luxury of going a little bit slower,” says Onalfo. “By the time we worked guys up to 60 minutes you could see things were starting to come together. We’ve got to continue to improve and make sure we’re ready six weeks from now.”
REAL DEAL. Panamanian Luis Tejada, acquired by Real Salt Lake last month, scored his first goal for the team in a 3-1 loss to Real Madrid Castilla, the “B” team of the famed Spanish club, on Monday. He joined the club a week ago after playing for Panama in qualifiers for the CONCACAF Gold Cup.
When Tejada was signed, Coach John Ellinger remarked he was looking forward to “that beast getting on the end of things.” Tejada (6-foot-1, 175 pounds) tapped in a sitter during RSL’s second game of its tour. It tied Rayo Vallecano, 2-2, on Thursday.
The Real Salt Lake contingent was on hand Sunday at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu when David Beckham suffered a knee injury in a 1-1 draw with city rival Getafe. He expected back in action next month, well in advance of his expected Salt Lake City appearance Sept. 19.