Savarese confirms Cosmos' interest in Roque Santa Cruz

During a conference call yesterday, Cosmos' head coach Gio Savarese confirmed that the club had been in talks with Malaga over striker Roque Santa Cruz. While he hinted that reports in the media that a large transfer fee had been offered might not be 100% accurate, he made it clear that the club had interest in bringing a quality forward into the mix if the right deal could be found.

Recently, the club have also been connected to Raul, and have had Caetano Calil in on trial as well. Combined with the departure of forward Alessandro Noselli and Paulo Mendes, it seems clear where the Cosmos are focusing in the transfer market at the moment.

For my money, the club seems to be focusing exactly where they need to. Savarese's side are plenty strong in both the midfield and defense, even with the injury issues Marcos Senna has been dealing with. On the wings there's certainly room for improvement, but it's certainly not a major area of weakness that other teams can look to exploit. The crippling deficiency of this squad has come in front of net, where they've been anything but clinical of late.

All season, and even stretching back into the 2013 fall season, the Cosmos have generally controlled possession and created chances. Finishing those chances has been an issue for quite a while though, and the club has relied far too heavily on set piece execution to find the back of the net.

In Mads Stokkelien and Stefan Dimitrov, the club have two forwards with excellent physical skills that can cause the defense plenty of problems. What they haven't gotten out of that pair is composed finishing, a few hot spells aside. They hoped to have solved this issue with the signing of Hans Denissen over the winter, but lingering injury issues have seent he forward on the sidelines for most of the season. Noselli was the forward that generally made the most of his limited chances, and now that he's gone, the Cosmos could really do with a player who won't waste the opportunity is the ball happens to drop to their feet.

In this regard, a player like Santa Cruz or Raul is perfect. They clearly aren't at the same level that they were during their best years, but even at the back end of their respective careers, both still have the ability to hit the target regularly. At this point, that may be what the Cosmos need more than anything.