Rumors... Herculez to MLS? No. Fourth Round Super Draft Pick Gone? Yes. [Updated]

Ugh, I don't normally like writing about rumors and hearsay. Seriously, they usually don't amount to much and when they do it's usually less exciting than what the rumor was originally trying to hype up. However, I don't want you guys to go around reading this or that and instantly believing something just because this site or that site said so. Rule of thumb, until MLSsoccer.com confirms something or Don Garber mentions it in an interview, we can probably chalk it up to being false.

With that said, let's tackle today's two juiciest rumors:

Herculez Gomez, USMNT player and Pachuca Striker has signed with MLS

In a tweet early this morning, Herculez Gomez wrote:

Firme con la MLS! Adios Mexico! Gracias por todo, era de lo mejores de tiempos!! Ciao

Translated this means: "Signed with MLS! Adios Mexico! Thanks for everything, was better than ever! Ciao."

While that might seem like a confirmation, given that it's from the player's own Twitter account, one has to know that today's is Mexico's version of April Fool's Day. Meaning that this tweet was probably just a practical joke intended for fans of Pachuca. Hell, Herculez probably never even meant for MLS fans to know about it given his choice to say it in Spanish. Were he trying to hype it up to MLS fans, his chosen language for the tweet probably would have been English.

So, yeah, consider this one entirely false.

Up next:

The Fourth Round of the MLS Super Draft for this year will be removed

In less than two weeks time we will be holding one of the largest MLS off-season events in the Super Draft. This, as I've explained in my "Teaching Timbers" post, is the draft in which most of our quality players come from either through GA contracts or other means. Unless the player is an international professional, DP, or other special circumstance a new MLS player will come into the league via the Super Draft.

Each Super Draft held has four rounds, or at least it's supposed to. Enter today's rumor from website "Keepin' It Real" and "Match Fit USA" and we've got people running around claiming that the fourth round has been removed and the 2011 Super Draft will now only be three rounds.

Is this legit? I highly doubt it as it simply makes zero sense. Maybe for the 2012 Super Draft, but not two weeks away from the 2011 Super Draft.

Beyond even that, what would be the point? We have enough players to last us four rounds. Teams have already made trades for fourth round picks. What could MLS possibly gain by removing it? There just seems to be no logical reason why this would come to pass, aside from a couple websites wanting to garner increased traffic over baseless rumors.

UPDATE: I'm receiving word from a reliable source that this could actually be legit. I'm not ready to confirm it, but I'm not going to write it off either.

Update 2: SBNation Soccer writer Jeremiah is confirming it through a reliable source. I'm liable to believe him. Apparently the fourth round draft pick for the 2011 Super Draft will become the 1st round pick for the Supplemental Draft (a draft that's not terrible important). You can read more about it via SB Nation Soccer.

--

So yeah, there are the two rumors from today. I don't place much faith in them, as you could probably tell. If MLS updates with confirmation of either I will most certainly eat my words, so to say, and issue an update. Until then, let's see if we can't find some real news.