Geoff Cameron and Stoke City Agree to Personal Terms; Work Permit Pending

Jesus Ortiz reported today that the Geoff Cameron transfer to Stoke City is done. Cameron will join the Potters in Orlando today. We congratulate Geoff on the next step in his career and thank him for everything he did on and off the field for the Houston Dynamo. Best of luck Geoff, we'll miss you!

One quick note, Cameron's work permit still needs to approved. He has an appeal hearing scheduled for next week that should hopefully clear that up. Today's news is basically that personal terms between Cameron and Stoke are done. The work permit shouldn't be an issue, but you never know.

It says a lot about Geoff Cameron as a person and player that he's developed from a 3rd round draft pick to heading overseas for a European adventure. It sucks to lose a player the likes of Cameron, but it's something Dynamo fans have gotten used to. Ricardo Clark and Stu Holden both left Houston and went overseas and while we've never really been able to replace them, the team has survived. We'll survive this too and honestly, we should be very proud of the Dynamo.

While Clark and Holden both left on free transfers after their contracts expired, Cameron will be a financial windfall for the club. We don't know the official numbers, but it's a good chunk of money that can be used for both allocation and operations cost.

We should be proud because the Dynamo learned their lesson in losing talents like Clark and Holden without compensation. We should be proud because Kinnear and his staff are helping to develop talented young soccer players. It really is a positive day, despite the disappointment of losing a talented player. That's soccer though, it's a business and you're only as good as the new talent you have in the development pipe (so to speak).

So we congratulate Cameron and feel damn glad that we have Jermaine Taylor. Best of luck to Geoff and I have a feeling Stoke City will join Bolton as an English team that gets a reasonable amount of attention from Houston soccer fans.