A Closer Look at the 2012 Real Salt Lake Roster Part 4 - The Roster

In a little over 48 hours Real Salt Lake, and the 18 other teams of Major League Soccer will need to submit their roster to the league to ensure they are in compliance with roster and salary cap rules (which we looked at in Part 3). So I thought I would do my best (with limited knowledge and a opinionated viewpoint) to predict what roster Real Salt Lake will enter the 2012 season with. Now this really isn't that tough of a task, as there are plenty of known factors and by my latest count RSL has filled 22 roster spots, which means they have just 8 spots left, but I don't expect that the team can or will use all 30 spots.

So again just to review a bit, MLS rosters have 30 slots, 20 which count against the salary cap, and 10 spots which are classified as "Off Budget Players". In addition to those rules, we know that RSL has just 6 international slots to work with. Now I know that a number of RSL players have applied for their green cards, for my roster I am going to work off an uninformed assumption that just 1 player will have gotten theirs in time for the March 1st deadline.

Now we know that RSL currently has 4 players in those OBP slots, both of our Generation Adidas players ( Luis Gil and Enzo Martinez) and our two current Home Grown Players (Nico Muniz and Lalo Fernandez). We know that Enzo Martinez will need one of RSL's six international slots.

On the 20 man roster side, we can take the players we know have contracts: Paulo Jr., Yordany Alvarez, Cody Arnoux, Kyle Beckerman, Tony Beltran, Nat Borchers, Fabian Espindola, Ned Grabavoy, Will Johnson, Javier Morales, Jamison Olave, Kyle Reynish, Nick Rimando, Alvaro Saborio, and Chris Wingert. Plus I see Chris Schuler being moved from the Off Budget roster to the Budget roster That is 16 players and 4 international slots (but I am going to minus my one for potential green card) so we have:

• 4 slots open of a potential 20 on the Salary Budget Players Roster
• 6 slots open of a potential 10 on the Off Budget Players Roster
• 2 international slots open of the 6 slots allocated to RSL

after the jump, I fill in the blanks

Now it is important to know that while the salary cap is tight, RSL gets a little breathing room from some allocation money that they get for qualifying for CONCACF Champions League, and I believe that they might also use the rule that allows them to leave two spots open in the Off Budget Player roster and get $35,000 in allocation money for each slot. So with that being said, let's take a look at what else we know:

We know that two players have said via twitter that they have signed deals with RSL for the 2012 season, and neither is a stretch for me. First is our 3rd pick in the MLS Draft, Sebastian Velasquez, who I believe will probably be signed to a deal that will put him on the Off Budget Players roster, typical for draft picks. Second is Jonny Steele, who is a bit more seasoned and while he may not be making much more than some of the off budget players, it makes sense to put him in one of the 5 open slots on the Salary Budget Player roster. Neither Jonny or Sebastian will need an international slot.

So with those facts in mind, an update to our status:

• 3 slots open of a potential 20 on the Salary Budget Players Roster - Jonny Steele
• 3 slots open of a potential 10 on the Off Budget Players Roster - Sebastian Velasquez & 2 spots for allocation $$
• 2 international slots open of the 6 slots allocated to RSL