So what kind of player is Luis Miguel Escalada? The Argentine striker received alot of fan fair in South America after playing for Emelec and LDU Quito, where he scored at a torrid pace (29 goals in 40 games in 2006, and 16 goals in 38 games in 2007).More recently there were reports of a lack of fitness that came out of Argentina and even in training camp with Real Salt Lake. There also has been a recent lack of results playing in Brazil, Argentina and Ecuador in 2008. Only time will reveal his current form, but what type of player/person is he?
Here are some brief comments that I was able to pick up from around the web:
"Escalada likes to play off the box some, behind the big striker, a la Tevez. So he is more of a complementary player." - Newells.theoffside.com
When asked whether his style was similar to that of Carlos Tevez, the player said: "Tevez is one of my references, I also have a great friendship with him." - La Capital
"Do you feel any pressure on you?
My move cost a million dollars, and people expected me to do the same, or slightly better than it did in Emelec (where he was scorer of the league). Things so far have not led to expect." - El Universo
"Do you miss Marcos Mondaini?
Marquitos played for me and it helped me a lot. But it is something that I put aside because I'm in another situation, but in future I want to play with him." - El Universo
"Emelec and Boca Juniors have close ties. So a few times Emelec has gotten youngsters from Boca's youth system. 2006 I believe, Emelec got two of them, Escalada and Mondaini. They both worked wonders together and Escalada had a great yea scoring a lot of goals. Next year he was bought by Liga de Quito but Mondaini went back to Argentina...
Escalada had an Ok year but didn't shine too much, scored less and was loaned out cause Liga needed something better. So he wasn't part of last year's Liga's glorious run.
I dunno how he has done all of 2008 while he was on loan and I don't know how many teams he played in that period either. But his last team was Gimnasia Y Esgrima de Jujuy (maybe he has been there all of 2008 I'm not sure), a modest first division team in Argentina.
He is an average player for South American leagues standard.
For MLS he should be more than fine though, and should even shine." - Big Soccer poster, Spencer
"The thing is that he's still young...22 years old and still developing his skills...at Liga he scored a fair amount of goals, but nowhere near his previous year's tally...I know he was loaned to Botafogo, GyE Jujuy, and I think Rosario or Newell's? But, he's a pretty effective striker inside the box, has pretty good pace as well and for the MLS, he'll definitely have no problem settling down scoring goals." - Big Soccer poster, LDU4ever
