The Union selling Julián Carranza for big money seems to just be a matter of time

Alejandro Bedoya and Kai Wagner’s futures were the big talking points at the Union’s end-of-season news conference on Monday. But they weren’t the only talking points for sporting director Ernst Tanner and manager Jim Curtin.

Here’s a look at some other headline items from the day.

» READ MORE: The Union say they’re in talks with captain Alejandro Bedoya about a new deal

The Argentine striker has big-money offers from Europe out there, and the Union seem certain to take whichever one they like best. But next year’s preseason camp is expected to start just five weeks from now. Might Carranza still be here when the curtain goes up?

For now, the Union took up Carranza’s contract option for 2024 to keep his rights and profit from a sale. Any team that has called Tanner would know that was coming.

Tanner: We picked up his option because that was our obligation. Carranza has always drawn a lot of interest, and it would have been easy to sell him in summer, to be honest. But we tried to keep the team together as far as possible. That will not be the case in [the] future. If there is an offer, of course, with one year remaining [of a] contract duration, that’s something you need to adjust [to] accordingly. Otherwise, you might not have the resources to go and get somebody else, in particular.

» READ MORE: 11 big questions facing the Union this offseason following their playoff exit

It stood out that the Union picked up the versatile Argentine attacker’s contract option after he didn’t play much this year, until a clutch substitute appearance in the playoff win at New England that helped seal the game. Curtin seems to envision a larger role for Torres next year.

Curtin: “With Torres, I put my hand up and I’ve said this to Joaquín to his face: I didn’t do a good enough job. I didn’t get him on the field enough. Maybe it was playing with two 10s. We didn’t play with wingers a lot. We would get on a good run of form. But his talent is still his talent. It’s the same talent Ernst and I saw to bring him here to be a one-v-one guy. And it just didn’t work out how we had hoped.

We’re trying to find, actively, a solution that makes the most sense for Joaquin. Because I do respect him as a player. Individual talent, he’s unbelievable, and he showed. His professionalism, even when he wasn’t playing towards the end of the year, I thought it was very good.”

» READ MORE: Union sign Jesús Bueno to new contract

Joe Bendik, the No. 2 netminder for the last two seasons, is out of contract and has departed. The Union have a few notable prospects in the pipeline, including Brooks Thompson and Holden Trent. Will they get a shot at the No. 2 job, or will Tanner look elsewhere?

Tanner: “We are looking for somebody, that’s clear, and maybe we have a solution soon. It depends, always, on a lot of sides nowadays.”

» READ MORE: Another Union season ends, and an era likely ends too

The 17-year-old attacking midfielder is one of the Union’s top academy prospects right now. Vazquez just got back from playing for the United States at the under-17 World Cup, where he played in all four games of the United States’ run to the round of 16. He scored a free-kick goal in the 3-2 knockout loss to Germany.

Tanner: “David is in our view, we see him as a prospect. We are currently in contract negotiations, and we want to have him for the first team.”

» READ MORE: From L.A. to Philly, David Vazquez’s Union Academy life could have gone a different direction

The Union played 51 games this year across the regular season, playoffs, Concacaf Champions League, U.S. Open Cup, and Leagues Cup. Next year will be just as busy, since the Union qualified for Concacaf’s big stage again. Players with major national team commitments will have it even worse.

Andre Blake and Damion Lowe will go to the Copa América with Jamaica; Dániel Gazdag will go to the European Championship with Hungary; Jack McGlynn and Nathan Harriel could go to the Olympics with the United States; and Olivier Mbaizo could start the year with Cameroon at the Africa Cup of Nations.

Curtin: “I hate saying the word prioritize, because you want to win everything, but you have to find — and we have to get creative with — what games you go full-tilt after, which games you go, ‘Let’s rotate and change,’ and trying to keep that drop-off not that much … There has to be a strategy, because if you go all out for 50 [games], you see what happens to teams by the end of the year.”

Tanner: “I knew from my history over in European clubs what it means, basically, if you play 50-plus games. But I can tell you now this is much harder over here than in Europe, and that has multiple reasons. You all know about the travel distances we needed to manage, and I’ll just give you the number: it was around 40,000 miles we have been traveling to our away games. …

If you exclude FIFA windows where we didn’t play games, we were playing 49 games, in seven months. Everybody can calculate by himself how many games per month in these dense months it is going to be. That is something that is just too much, and that’s what we need to acknowledge in the future — also in our roster scheduling, as well as of course in the scheduling of the games and how we deal with that.

Because you will see that there is an increase of injuries. Players are mentioning that it is too much for them. And it looks to me that almost nobody is listening to that.