Rocastle Signed, Smith and Kostrov Official, More on Chhetri, and Pardo Waived

Quite a bit of player news from the Wizards today involving different players coming to and leaving Kansas City. First the Wizards have signed one of their latest trialists to a contract. While the rumors had been that Sunil Chhetri would be signing with KC, he's not the latest signing. Instead it's Craig Rocastle, the midfielder who came into camp around the same time as Chhetri. This move appears to be in the works for a week or so now. Rocastle has played for multiple English teams in his 9 year professional career, last playing with Forest Green Rovers. Of the moves the Wizards have made this preseason, this may be the one I am most underwhelmed with. Rocastle is on his 15th team in 10 years as a professional player, playing 174 for the previous 14 over the 9 years. He's also been going the wrong way down the table from his height at Chelsea as he was most recently playing in the English Conference, the 5th division in England. At 28 years old, the fact that he's not made his way back up the table is frustrating that we've gone and signed the player who 's better known as being the brother of David Rocastle. This move just doesn't make a lot of sense in my opinion.

Moving onto more official player signing news, news that had already been reported in other sources. That's the signing of midfielders Ryan Smith and Igor Kostrov. Smith has had an impressive preseason and appears to have won the starting left sided midfield spot, taking the place of Claudio Lopez. From what I've seen of Smith him and Espinoza are going to cause fits for teams down the Wizards left side, it was almost a seamless attack no matter which of the two was going forward. Kostrov had been with the Wizards for most of the team's preseason impressing enough to earn a contract. At this point it appears Kostrov will be coming off the bench playing anywhere in the midfield for the Wizards.

Yesterday I reported on the Wizards potential signing of Indian international, Sunil Chhetri. That news has continued today as more places pick up on the story making it appear more likely KC will be signing the striker. Some of the latest news talks about how Chhetri has an out clause in his contract with his I-League team that will allow him to leave to join the Wizards. While I'm a little cautious of this move as well based on where Chhetri has played, unlike Rocastle, Chhetri has at least consistently played at the top level and has been offered contracts with teams at high levels in England recently, unlike Rocastle.

Finally, the Wizards have parted ways with another former player, as the team has waived goalkeeper, Boris Pardo. Pardo had spent the past two years with the Wizards while the year before he was a league keeper and trained with Kansas City. In his 2 years with KC, Pardo appeared in one game for the Wizards, the team's 2009 US Open Cup game against the Minnesota Thunder. The Wizards won the game on penalty kicks in no small part due to Pardo who stopped 2 penalty kicks in the shoot out to put the Wizards through to the next round. He won man of the match for that performance. Also released was Louis Crayton. Neither of these moves is really surprising after the signings of Jimmy Nielsen and Eric Kronberg, while Pardo and Crayton were fighting for a roster spot their chances went far down with those signings.