Loudoun transfer Johnston, Mark Parsons gets Angel City job, and more: Friday Freedom Kicks
Happy Friday, everyone! It’s looking like another cold weekend, so dress warm and stock up on your favorite cozy foods before settling in for some winter sports-watching.
Loudoun United Football Club announce transfer of Isaiah Johnston to Halifax Wanderers FC of the Canadian Premier League (Loudoun United)
Midfielder Isaiah Johnston joined Loudoun part-way through the 2024 season, made 14 appearances, and scored one goal. He previously played for York United in the CPL, so this is something of a homecoming.
The Women’s Game continues to interview Spirit players this offseason. (The Hey Spirits team needs to step up our game!!) In this episode, Hal Hershfelt discusses being drafted to the Spirit, learning she was going to the Olympics while in a nail salon, her cat Bobbi, and more.
Angel City Names Mark Parsons as Sporting Director (Angel City FC)
I think this is a good move for Mark Parsons, who you may remember coached Washington Spirit from 2013-2015 and in 2023. His recent coaching gigs have not gone particularly well, but he’s got a good eye for talent.
Girma skips USWNT camp with minor injury as transfer rumors swirl (Pro Soccer Wire)
Naomi Girma to Europe looks increasingly likely.
North Carolina Football Club announce industry-first partnership with Jump, The unified fan experience platform (NC Courage)
The NC Courage will be using Jump as an alternative to Ticketmaster and to sell things like food and merchandise to fans at games. I would like to see more teams moving away from Ticketmaster, especially to companies like this that charge no ticketing fees, and I suppose this is a good test case.
Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend (The Guardian)
For the Premier League fans, a look ahead at this weekend’s matches.
Five talking points on return from WSL winter break (BBC)
Also this weekend, the Women’s Super League will be returning from their winter break.
Finally, in a sports overlap, Washington Spirit players have predicted the winner’s of this weekend’s NFL games. I think they are being overly optimistic about the Commanders’ chances. How about you?
Glad to see Spirit players getting some love and I think Sam Mewis is terrific. As a player–she had a season, maybe two, where I thought she was the best in the world. Dominant in the way Michelle Akers was dominant.
Interesting about Girma. I wonder how much of this is a dysfunctional franchise and how much of this is Hayes encouraging her to go overseas to a big club.
And Annie, I’m sure you mentioned this somewhere and I missed it. When does the Spirit open camp for the 2025 season and where will they train?
I think it’s underrated how a talent like Sam Mewis vanishing from the team affected the trajectory of the USWNT for about a cycle. Her nickname amongst the team was “The Tower of Power,” and that is a good enough indication of what a presence she was.
They have not announced preseason information yet! It seems like most of the players are back in town (with some exceptions, like Leicy Santos), and Jason Anderson reported they would be beginning next week. My guess is that they will do some training at the performance center in the Virginia and some in Florida, as they have done in the past.
Seeing as Mark Parsons was singularly responsible for making Tara Mckeown a CB, and two years later she’s getting a national team look, seems like player evaluation is indeed a good job for him
Give Me Sport has ranked United as having the 7th best winter transfer season in MLS so far.
So that’s something.
(Atlanta was #1, and part of that was getting Klich.)
(Ok, a pretty small part.)
Well, it will be interesting…..
I’m curious who the “one other player to be signed soon” that Goff reported on will be.
Apparently Troy Lesesne is having a press conference. Some player updates:
Conner Antley is doing well and is about one month away from full fitness.
Jackson Hopkins has “an ankle issue” and is out 4-6 weeks.
Ted Ku-DiPietro had shoulder surgery, and is out for a couple months. Woof.
United is going to be counting on Teddy KDP to take on more of the goalscoring duties, and Hopkins was basically the only depth at CDM. This team still needs bodies really badly.
On top of that, if you’re gonna make this season about “developing the youth,” that youth has to be healthy. We’re in for a rough start.
Goff notes that there are three other young trialists and two academy players in camp. He doesn’t identify them, but he says he doesn’t believe one of them is Graham Jones, who would have seemed to have been the Academy player closest to getting a first team contract (and could have been fullback depth).
I would doubt that any of the trialists would be a U22 signing. I don’t think someone like that would be trialing. If anything, it would seem more like USL players trying to catch an MLS deal.
I think we do have some decent young players. But “leaning on the youth” sure seems to be a cop out of “not putting together a truly competitive roster.”
That’s pretty bad for our young guys. Hopkins injury last season wasn’t his ankle too, was it?
I don’t remember, but I think it was. Not sure if it’s the same injury though, because that would be a looooooong time to be dealing with it.
Very badly needing bodies.
I’m curious when Ted had his shoulder surgery. I’m sure it was nothing like mine, but mine was 9 months ago almost to the day. Even if my other joints allowed it, I’m not sure it would be the best idea for me to playing a contact sport right now
On that last topic, Lesesne says the team may add one or two more players (Goff has reported they intend to sign one more pretty soon), but that any other newcomers would be coming in the summer.
This is tough. Peglow could be okay, and Kim Joon Hong seems like a good prospect, and central defense might be a bit better, but… there haven’t really been any difference makers to come on board. We’re expecting Stroud and Bartlett to repeat their career best years. We’re expecting Schnegg to be healthy and we’re expecting Enow and Peltola to take a step forward. We’re expecting Pirani to continue his development into a supplemental goalscorer. We’re expecting Kijima to be a replacement for Klich.
We’re expecting this team to hang on enough that some difference makers MIGHT arrive in the summer. Jesus Christ.
I kind of want to sit down with ownership and management and have a conversation that starts with “You guys realize that MLS 1.0 ended, like, more than 15 years ago?” ‘Cause they clearly don’t.
Sure, the team won a trophy with its band of misfit toys in 2013. Since then, I think it’s only won two elimination games against MLS or better competition. The 2015 play-in game against New England, and a US Open Cup game in 2019 against Philadelphia. It does (only sometimes) beat USL or NASL competition in the Open Cup, and it manages to get past the group stage in Leagues Cup, or squeak into the playoffs, but then once it’s there, it swiftly is dispatched.
They just aren’t bothering with any kind of pretense this year that changing these outcomes matters to them.
I don’t think they’ve even hired a Claudia Pagan replacement yet.
This may be my last year. I am dumping money into a never ending cycle as an STH. I certainly will hit up a few odd games, apple tv, but this is getting very tiresome, and expensive.
I took a half-hearted second to smash together a lineup of what seems like the starting XI. Maybe some guys are on the wrong foot, but still:
Benteke
Peglow Pirani Stroud
Enow Peltola
Schnegg Rowles Bartlett Herrera
Jun-hong
Do we think this is a playoff team? Which of these guys would definitely start for a top-half of the table team?
That’s the lineup I’ve been layout out on my scratch sheet, except that I expect Leal to start, either over Stroud in a 4-2-3-1 or 3-5-2, or instead of Bartlett in a 4-3-3 (with Peltola sliding to CB).
Benteke and Herrera remain the only secure starters-for-a-competitive-squad, IMO… the other guys are aspiring to be that good, but they all have to prove it.
Yeah, Leal is really the only question. I think we might see five attackers with Benteke and Pirani as a second striker, and then Peglow, Leal, and Stroud in the midfield, with Enow as the sole DM. There’s a lot of options for interchange between everybody that’s not Benteke up top.
You’re right that Benteke and Herrera are the only sure things on a playoff team. I think Schnegg could be, but yeah, we have to see it. A lot of the players have the potential to be pretty good, but are just unknowns at this point. We’ll get to see how Mackay’s talent evaluation is.
I’m less concerned about Mackay’s eye for talent, and more concerned by the ownership’s continued lack of interest, as well as the likelihood that DC United just isn’t where players want to land. That this is the best we got seems more about a dearth of enticing qualities in the club than Mackay’s ability to spot them in the first place.
That and, aside from Hopkins and TKD (who were signed ages ago), we’re not seeing homegrowns get many minutes if there are other players available. We’ve sent two young guys on their way because they’re too good to loan to random USL teams (who don’t care about their development) but not good enough for MLS (so it seems). And it’ll be another long while before we have a real reserve team they could grow in.
So, sometimes fate opens up for a homegrown at a position, like it did for Bill Hamid when (was it Troy Perkins?) was woeful as a starter. Some homegrowns get a long term chance, and are forged in the hottest of fires to become a veteran ahead of schedule. This often means that the team suffers their growing pains, but long term benefits. That’s when there’s usually a single position held by an academy alum.
If it’s all over the field, that’s not a good thing. I’d push back on the idea that we need to play homegrowns rather than signings, I’d argue that homegrowns need a bar to jump over. Except in the scenario i mentioned above, but fated young players, on the level of Hamid, are rare.
And there’s a very significant difference between giving youth chances for growth, and saddling them with responsibilities they are not able to meet so early. One is positive, the other traumatizing.
I completely agree with that last point. It makes it hard to tell whether we correctly jettisoned a bunch of our homegrowns or broke them in the process of trying to keep them in the organization. It would be great if we could avoid doing that and have opportunities for them to play instead of signing mediocre/old players when faced with an empty bench. It doesn’t seem like those chances are there right now (because they’ll just get manhandled if thrown into league games, and no one has turned into Hamid so far).