Report: New York Red Bulls welcome new trialist, David Spies

Big Apple Soccer's Kristian Dyer has provided an update on the New York Red Bulls' current trialists.

The promised "Portuguese midfielder" does not appear to have landed at RBNY, but there is a new man in training: 21-year-old midfielder David Spies. He is not, as best we can tell, Portuguese; he is German.

His career to date has been spent with the youth and reserve teams of some of Germany's better-known clubs: Vfl Bochum, FC Nurnberg; most recently, Augsburg. He had a solid season with Augsburg II prior to his present free agency, scoring six goals in 31 appearances.

The presence of a German player in RBNY training might seem to imply a little help from Red Bull Global Soccer's scouting network, but Spies probably followed a different route to Sporting Director Ali Curtis' attention. Empire of Soccer identified the player as a trialist with New York Cosmos about a week ago.

Transfermarkt.com suggests Spies has dual-nationality: both German and American. So his current tour of US pro clubs might be more about him exploring his options than any active trawling of European waters for potential RalfBallers by RBNY.

Regarding RBNY's other known recent trialists, BAS reports Alexis Meva - an attacking player from the Barcelona academy system - has departed without a contract offer. Defender Gege Soriola was reportedly due for a chat about "possibilities" with team management on Friday. If he's still in camp in the coming week, perhaps those talks went well for him.