The news that New York Red Bulls captain Claudio Reyna is to announce his retirement Wednesday prompted Jonah Freedman to accuse the club of having missed the boat on signing a potentially huge player. If the clearly incapacitated Reyna had stepped down at the start of the season, the team could have set its sights on no lesser a name than Ronaldinho.
“The Bulls missed the boat,” he writes. “Or more specifically, they missed the Titanic. There is perhaps no bigger name in the world that was legitimately available to MLS. No matter what you think of him — overweight, over-partied or just plain over — he may be the best player around to put rears in seats in this country. And, in fact, he’s already done it: Giants Stadium was sold out when ‘Dinho and his former club played the Red Bulls in a friendly two summers ago.”
If the ailing, title-shy franchise wants to really be one of the league’s big players, as it has so often professed over the past 13 years, then why didn’t they “throw everything they had at convincing Ronaldinho to make an earth-shattering move to the U.S., perhaps bigger than even Beckham’s? The point here is, the Red Bulls need do something big, and they need to do it soon. They’ve got the money, they’ve got the marketing power and now, there are no more excuses.” Reyna has gifted the team his departure. “Now it’s up to the club to get a celebrity that will make the casual sports fan care. Because right now, no one’s watching.”