MONTREAL – The Montreal Impact lost Donny Toia on Tuesday as new MLS club Atlanta United FC made the defender its first selection in the 2016 MLS Expansion Draft.
“We had to make difficult choices in this process in order to come up with our protected list and unfortunately, one of our players was selected,” said Impact technical director Adam Braz. “We want to thank Donny for his contributions to the club both on and off the field in the last two years and we wish him the best of luck in his future endeavours.”
In two seasons with the Impact, Toia played 4,064 minutes over 48 regular season games, 44 of which he started, picking up one goal and two assists. He helped the team reach the 2014-15 CONCACAF Champions League Final, starting all six games in the Championship Stage.
The 20 current MLS clubs had the ability to protect 11 players from their rosters. These 11 protected players, in addition to Generation adidas players, who have not been graduated at the end of 2016, as well as Homegrown players on a club’s off-budget roster at the end of the 2016 MLS season were automatically protected. All remaining MLS players were available for selection by the two expansion clubs.
Each MLS club could lose a maximum of one player in the Expansion Draft. Once a player was selected from a club’s unprotected roster, that club was removed from the Expansion Draft process and could not lose any further players. As such, no other Impact player was selected in the draft.
