At long last, the Primary Transfer Window is closed! That means MLS teams are done adding new pieces until the Secondary Transfer Window opens on July 24. There are a couple of exceptions to that:
- MLS teams can still sign players, either on a temporary or permanent basis, from within their own pipeline (kids already in the academy or under contract with the MLS NEXT Pro team).
- Any player who was already out of contract when the window closed on Wednesday can be signed at any point.
Those are obviously not the big swings, though. The big swings have already been taken, or the pieces have been arranged in a way for further big swings to be taken during the summer. So what you see now is more or less the group your team will battle with for the next 15-ish games.
What we’ve got below are some grades with an overview. If you want a comprehensive list of transactions, here you go:
Bookmark that page. It’s very useful.
In we go:
If this was the “offseason ambition grades,” then Austin would probably be a solid A, if not an A+. They set their club-record transfer fee twice, first signing center forward Brandon Vazquez and then bringing in second forward/goalscoring (errrr, in theory) winger Myrto Uzuni, pairing them with the previous club-record signing, Osman Bukari, who was brought in last summer.
And, you know, they’ve got seven goals in nine games. So… patience is necessary.
I still think it’ll all work decently well, even if Uzuni isn’t quite fitting in the exact way I’d feared he wouldn’t quite fit, and even if neither of their two central midfield imports have consistently hit meaningful passes, and even if Bukari is approaching the RigoniZone (though he was very good off the bench last weekend).
Robert Taylor, acquired this week, should help.
Could they have done more to address midfield chance-creation needs? Yes. Am I secretly happy they didn’t because it’s given Owen Wolff room to blossom? Also yes.
Best move: I still can’t believe they reportedly got eight figures for Sebastián Driussi. What a heist. That’s the deal that should have moved Rodolfo Borrell to tears.
The Rapids needed to get someone who could win the ball in central midfield and stop the occasional counter, and instead of going shopping overseas, they spent on Seattle homegrown Josh Atencio.
I loved this move at the time – still do – even if Atencio has struggled a bit in filling his role, with the Rapids changing their shape as a result. Center back Chidozie Awaziem, acquired in a trade with Cincy, has also struggled a bit, but I like that move, too. Same with the Ted Ku-DiPietro cash trade.
It’s not clicking yet, but the theory (add MLS-proven commodities to a 50-point team) is good and the process was good. And as Zack Steffen has shown in his second year in Colorado, sometimes things take a little time to come together.
Best move: The trade for Awaziem also brought along Ian Murphy from FC Cincinnati.
You can never have enough MLS-caliber center backs. Colorado got two of them, both in their respective primes, for up to $1.2 million of GAM. Excellent, if low-profile work.
Dallas went into rebuilding mode really quickly this offseason, moving on from two of their DPs as well as a max-TAM player, declining options on a bunch of veterans who were no longer in their plans, and releasing a bunch of kids who didn’t quite work out.
The centerpiece of this new era is former MLS MVP Lucho Acosta, who was one of the first cash trades in league history. They spent a base $5 million on him, and so far most of the goals they’ve scored this year have been either created or scored by Lucho.
Everything around him, up to and including the actual formation Dallas are going to settle on, is a work in progress.
Best move: Alan Velasco never really looked like a top-end MLS attacker, save for a three-game stretch in the summer of 2023. They somehow got reportedly up to $12 million for him from Boca Juniors, which freed them up to go after the much better and cheaper – and also, to be fair, older – Acosta.
Another Texas team that had a busy offseason, this one centered on moving past the Coco Carrasquilla and Héctor Herrera era – they sold the first to Pumas UNAM and declined the second’s very expensive option – while trying to make the kinds of moves that could keep the game model intact.
It’s been a struggle. Jack McGlynn hasn’t done enough of the dirty work to be a natural fit in Herrera’s spot and none of the attackers have found the net regularly. Maybe new guy Ondřej Lingr, who had himself a spectacular debut, will start changing things.
Best move: I still can’t figure out why Femi Awodesu wasn’t drafted two years ago – I had him with an easy first-round grade. Hell, I had him in the top 10!
He’s finally gotten his chance this year, filling in admirably for Micael (sold to Brazilian giants Palmeiras, where he’s starting every game; feather in the cap for Ben Olsen, Pat Onstad & Co. for the developmental job they did with him). Awodesu's not been perfect, but he’s on track to be a high-level MLS starter.
It was a slow-rolling and ultimately underwhelming offseason for Sporting, one in which they didn’t quite do enough to save Peter Vermes’ job (the MLS coaching legend played a role before his dismissal at the end of March).
Which isn’t to say they did nothing. DP No. 10 Manu García has been very good the past few weeks, and the TAM winger who came with him, Shapi Suleymanov, has also been productive. And Dejan Joveljić looks like he’ll more than justify the money spent getting him from the Galaxy.
Add in homegrown signing Jacob Bartlett winning the No. 6 job (he’s had ups and downs, but the potential to be an excellent MLS d-mid is there), and this really was Sporting’s best window in forever. Even if they’re still in need at a couple of spots.
Best move: As good as the García move is going to prove to be (I think), and as excited as I am for what Bartlett’s rapid ascent into the starting XI means for the club philosophically, getting Chivas to come in and take Alan Pulido off their hands was a miracle. An absolute miracle.
Worth it.
Best move: Christian Ramírez will score 8-to-14 goals across all competitions every year for the next three seasons, and will still be relevant when the Galaxy are finally good again (which will be, I think, next season).
We all know that salary-cap constraints make it difficult to keep a winner together for too long, and it’s clear LAFC were, to a degree, juggling that.
But they were also facing their own, perpetual “grass is greener” approach to talent acquisition. Marlon has been in no way as good as the departed Jesús Murillo; Eduard Atuesta’s exit has left a massive creative void in central midfield; Cengiz Ünder looks the part, but in truth he hasn’t added much, and thus far has only taken playing time from the more-deserving David Martínez.
They made themselves worse and while I still think they’ll be ok in the long run, they need a reassessment of club priorities once head coach Steve Cherundolo steps down after the season.
Best move: D-mid Igor Jesus has mostly looked very good, and we know fellow new addition Mark Delgado is one of the best No. 8s in MLS. Getting those guys in is good work irrespective of other roster moves, as was grabbing Frankie Amaya on loan from Toluca. They are midfield workhorses, all three of them.
And they point the way for what LAFC should do when Ünder’s loan ends this summer, which opens up a DP slot: bring in a new attacking midfielder to play in front of those guys.
If the Black & Gold do that and nothing else, they will be the favorites to come out of the West again, for the third time in four years. Let Martínez and Nathan Ordaz lock down the right wing; let the current crop of 6s and 8s do the midfield piano carrying.
Go out, in the summer, and get a piano player to add to that mix.
This winter mostly consisted of declining options and finding loans for youngsters who hadn’t grown into a role, or veterans who’d lost theirs. It was a continuation of the rebuild that had begun last winter under new CSO Khaled El-Ahmad and, eventually, head coach Eric Ramsay.
All good and necessary stuff. I’m surprised, however, that they went after young projects in central midfield rather than more proven, two-way commodities.
That changed a little bit with the pending acquisition of Julian Gressel, who’s excelled both as a central midfielder and as a wingback in MLS. Getting him doesn’t solve their central midfield defensive issues – they really need a rangy ball-winner; hopefully one of those young projects I mentioned can wear those boots – but he should help them keep the ball better, which is a big part of being a high-level defensive side. And oh yeah, he’s been one of the league’s most consistent chance creators for almost a decade.
Best move: It’ll be the Gressel deal. He’s an upgrade to their XI, and he gives them flexibility in their approach to actually having the ball on occasion.
It feels like the Evander saga was a million years ago, but we’re only two months past the end of the storyline that was obviously going to dominate Portland’s offseason. They did well to sell him to Cincy at a profit in two big ways:
- They kept him out of the Western Conference, so they’re not facing him in any revenge games with Audi MLS Cup Playoffs implications.
- Because it was a “cash trade” to another MLS team rather than an overseas transfer, they got GAM (this is one of the fine print incentives to doing business within MLS, because you don’t get GAM when you sell a DP – one that can't be bought down – overseas no matter how much you get for him).
That’s really good work, and while David Da Costa hasn’t been MVP-level as Evander’s replacement so far, he definitely brings more consistency playing against the ball.
Best move: I have some quibbles about the smaller moves they made. But when you nail the biggest thing – selling your No. 10 at a profit to get GAM, and then replacing him with a younger guy who looks like he’s going to be very good in this league – you get a good grade for your window.
Nearly 20 players from last year’s squad are gone. From transfers to trades to a whole host of options declined, it’s been a pretty stunning makeover for a team that set their single-season points record in 2024.
Thus far they’ve brought in 15 replacements, and it hasn’t gone well for the most part. They look like they’re a team in the middle of a reboot, and with new owners in town, I’m sure there’s some added pressure.
Best move: It took forever – and to be clear, I don’t blame Sporting KC for slow-playing this – but RSL finally got their guy in William Agada, who I think will be a perfect fit at the No. 9 while not occupying a DP slot. He’s 25, he had 24g/6a in 4,100 minutes across all comps, and his underlying numbers last year were borderline elite:
I expect his off-ball dynamism to create space for Diego Luna to continue leveling up as a No. 10.
They built an entire team this winter and damn does it look good so far. They likely won’t set a new points record for expansion teams, and they’re not going to be the first expansion side since the 2009 Sounders to lift a trophy. That’s just a little beyond them.
But they absolutely nailed both their DP signings, have been smart about finding value elsewhere in the roster build, and, in d-mid Jeppe Tverskov, have one of my favorite players in the league to watch.
The soccer they’ve played thus far has been beautiful and effective, and they’re aggressively adding young players to the mix with an eye towards long-term development. Can’t ask for much more than that.
Best move: Tverskov ties the whole room together. Luca de la Torre was a bargain, coming in on loan from Celta de Vigo. Of the two DPs, Anders Dreyer has been better and cheaper.
But the Chucky Lozano signing (which, I guess, was technically last summer) was a statement of intent about what the club’s trying to be. You don’t get a successful launch like this if you don’t get that first big signing right. Everything good has flowed from that.
There have been a lot of jokes about Bruce Arena doing everything in his power to rebuild the 2023 Revs, and I get it. It’s kind of funny.
But also, the 2023 Revs were on track for 65 points before everything imploded that summer. And most of these players were available at a pretty cut rate – the center backs, fullbacks and midfielders, anyway.
And so now the Quakes have a core and a direction they’re pointed in. They still need to do some work, but the attack is humming, there are promising young players at every spot, and the boss has a 30-year track record of success.
Best move: Two years ago, if you’d told me that Noel Buck was gonna be sold for $6 million, I’d have taken the over. The Revs just traded him for 1/10th of that amount.
Even if Buck doesn’t ever hit his potential, this feels like a steal for the Quakes.
They brought back a pair of key veterans, Albert Rusnák and João Paulo, on good contracts. They promoted some kids who’ve given valuable minutes. They re-acquired veteran center back Kim Kee-Hee, which is paying dividends. They got Ryan Kent for free.
Mostly, though, they swung the deal with Dallas to bring in Paul Arriola, who was playing good soccer before his unfortunate ACL tear, and Jesús Ferreira.
Ferreira has struggled, obviously, but it was still a great deal to make and the first “decline and extend at a lower number” move that I can think of in MLS history. What I mean by that is Ferreira gave up more money this year, which opened up a DP spot, to sign a longer-term deal at a lower annual rate but with more guaranteed money for the long haul.
This is a pretty common thing in the NBA and NHL, but I can’t recall it ever happening in MLS before (not with a DP anyway).
And for what it’s worth, Ferreira, after a two-month struggle, might’ve turned the corner in the past two weeks.
I do wish they’d gotten a U22 signing across the line. That’s probably slated for the summer, though bear in mind the Sounders, because they are playing in the FIFA Club World Cup, can have another, smaller transfer window open at the start of June. This is an official FIFA window, not an MLS or U.S. Soccer thing.
Best move: The Ferreira deal was ingenious and will pay off in the long term.
It’s hard to knock their window on a personnel front: Conrad Wallem should be a pretty good starting wingback in MLS, and veterans like Timo Baumgartl, Alfredo Morales and Xande Silva should provide solid depth. It’s the kind of understated window you’d expect from a team that had just logged an A+ of a summer window. The heavy lifting had already been done.
The problem is that sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel seems to have hired a coach, in Olof Mellberg, whose philosophy does not jibe with the strengths of the roster. And so the guys that made last summer an A+ aren’t really doing much this year, Wallem’s played as much in central midfield as out wide, the veteran backups are starters, the kids can’t get onto the field, etc. etc. etc.
A successful window is as much about asset deployment as it is about asset acquisition.
Best move: Morales has given them reliable minutes at a crucial spot.
The best thing you can do if you’re a CSO in this league is to hire a head coach who’s not afraid to play and develop young players. Axel Schuster did exactly that when he hired Jesper Sørensen this winter.
The Dane deserves a ton of credit not just for getting another level out of Brian White and Andrés Cubas, or for holding things together in the absence of Ryan Gauld, but for making Sebastian Berhalter into one of the best two-way midfielders in the league, and turning 2023 first-round SuperDraft pick J.C. Ngando into a guy who can play major minutes against LIGA MX grandes, and for getting Pedro Vite to finally realize his attacking potential.
He’s also made Jayden Nelson, who seemed like he was on his way to obscurity, into one of the best acquisitions of the year by anyone, has replaced Stuart Armstrong without skipping a beat, and has used Daniel Ríos both as a replacement for and a complement to White up top.
Every box is being checked. If you get a coach who makes every player on the roster perform 15 to 50% better, you’re going to look like a transfer genius.
Best move: Sørensen is proving to be West Coast Wilfried Nancy, which is as high a compliment as I can possibly give.
Force me to pick a player, though, and it’s Nelson. He’s a pressing winger in this set-up who’s weaponized his skill on the ball and his range. This is the best version of the kid – one I never really thought we’d see.
