Untwisting an odd one: Chicago Fire and Columbus Crew swap frowning faces

There’s a high “dark cloud” factor covering the multi-layered swap between Chicago and Columbus.

One party was unhappy in Columbus, all hacked off about things in Ohio and thus presumably thrilled to be in Chicago.

One guy sounds none too happy to see that his rights were traded to Chicago. So he’s all hacked off, and it sounds like he has no plans of going to Chicago – never mind that he’s out of contract with nowhere to play at the moment.

Oh, then there Dominic Oduro. He’s happy! Or seems to be if you watch his smiley Tweets.

Yes, this one will take a while to properly dissect.

• The long and short is that Chicago gets midfielder Dilly Duka and the MLS rights of first Robbie Rogers from Columbus, in exchange for striker Oduro.
• Duka, a talented U.S. under-23, is headed to Chicago. He seemed to be moving up the ranks at steady pace around Crew Stadium; Duka got 14 league starts and six appearances off the bench in 2012, not awful for a third-year man at age 23. But he got sideways with management and never seemed to be in Robert Warzycha’s plans for 2013.
• Rogers failed to catch on at Leeds, and that was after hitting a plateau in Columbus previously. So he’s out there, waiting to be signed. That cranked up the speculation wheel, fueling talk that the speedy left winger was en route back to MLS, where Columbus still had his rights. Now, his rights belong to Chicago … but that appears unlikely to happen based on Rogers’ toxic Tweet.
• That’s not a total black eye on the Fire. Not yet, anyway. If Chicago can turn Rogers’ rights into something (a draft pick, a smidgeon of allocation money, perhaps) then they come out looking good here. Either way, Duka for Oduro isn’t a bad deal.
• Oduro is something of a one-trick pony, all speed but precious little imagination. He has averaged a shade under five goals in seven MLS seasons, now on his fifth MLS stop. He’s a good second-half pace-changer, but probably not much more. But, hey … at least he’s happy!