Majority owner Dave Checketts was thrilled that team executives were able to work out the complex deal to sign forward Alvaro Saborio to a four-year deal earlier this week, and said there was one key strategic move they made that turned out to be the difference.

Keeping quiet.

Checketts said that FC Sion, the team in Switzerland that owned Saborio's contract, had demanded an offer from RSL on the day before Thanksgiving. But Checketts counseled general manager Garth Lagerwey not to deliver one, and instead avoid communicating until after the holiday weekend.

“The main thing we had to decide to do was sit on it during Thanksgiving weekend,” Checketts said. “I just believed that that club in Switzerland, as tough as they are … did not want to go out and shop [Saborio] coming off the surgery and him saying, 'I want to stay here and I don't want to go anywhere else.' I thought we had more leverage than Garth probably thought we did.”

“I just said, look, we have till Dec. 1” when Saborio's loan deal expired, Checketts added. “We're going to go enjoy the holiday. Don't place a single call. Don't send a single e-mail. Let them wonder what we're up to.”

Did he feel as if it worked?

“There's no doubt,” Checketts said. “They moved a long way over Thanksgiving weekend, and when we came back, the deal was infinitely better.”

Neither Checketts nor any other RSL officials would confirm what the team ultimately paid to buy out Saborio's contract with FC Sion — something whose price tag was originally listed at $1 million in the deal. But they did acknowledge that they negotiated a significant discount, and the final figure is believed to have been in the $600,000 to $700,000 range.