Philadelphia Union's Protected List

MLSsoccer.com has released the Protected Eleven lists for every team in the league. The Philadelphia Union's list of protected players - as well as who was left exposed - is a bit surprising to say the least:

Protected:

Maurice Edu
Fabinho (Int'l)
Sebastien Le Toux
Cristian Maidana (Int'l)
Vincent Nogueira (Int'l)
CJ Sapong
Carlos Valdes (Int'l)
Andrew Wenger
Sheanon Williams
Ethan White
Raymon Gaddis

Automatically Protected:

Andre Blake (Int'l / Generation adidas)
Cristhian Hernandez (Int'l / Homegrown)
Jimmy McLaughlin (Homegrown)
Zach Pfeffer (Homegrown)

Not Protected:

Austin Berry
Brian Brown (Int'l)
Corben Bone
Fred
Brian Carroll
Conor Casey
Danny Cruz
Antoine Hoppenot
Michael Lahoud
Rais M'Bohli (Int'l)
Zac MacMath
Leo Fernandes
Richard Marquez
Pedro Ribeiro (Int'l)
Aaron Wheeler

Perhaps the most shocking part of this is the Union have exposed both Zac MacMath and Rais M'Bolhi. It would be understandable to expose only one - either M'Bolhi to leave the American MacMath if/when Jamaican international Andre Blake is called for international duty, or MacMath since the Union just put out a ton of money to acquire the Algerian - but certainly not both. One would imagine that should one be selected, the other would certainly be withdrawn from the unprotected list.

Also curious was protecting Fabinho - perhaps it has to do something with "(making) available a number of international players equal to their total number of international players minus three." A much easier way would be to say "Clubs must protect at least three international players" but MLS is gonna MLS.

Who would you have protected and left unprotected? We'd love to hear what you think about this. Feel free to tell us who you would have protected and left unprotected in the comments section below!