USMNT win, Washington Spirit schedule released, and more: Thursday Freedom Kicks
Happy Thursday. I was at the USMNT match last night and am currently doing some work before returning to DC today, so here’s what we got from yesterday:
USA 3-0 Costa Rica – A fun win to end the 2025 January window (SSFC)
The USMNT close out January Camp with a 3-0 win over Costa Rica. They go 2-0 in January Camp this year, a great showing from the squad.
It’s the Washington Spirit’s 2025 Regular Season Schedule! (DP)
The Spirit schedule is here! The 2025 schedule was released, and I’m excited for everything to kick off in March!
Reviewing the NWSL 2025 schedule release videos (DP)
Annie gives us a look at some of the other cool schedule release videos from across the NWSL as the 2025 matches were released.
Chelsea to sign USA’s Girma for world record fee (BBC)
Naomi Girma is headed to Chelsea in a world record transfer on the women’s side that could exceed $1 million!
Real Madrid post record revenue over €1 billion (ESPN)
Real Madrid brought in over €1 billion in revenue in 2024, according to Deloitte. Real Madrid…hire me.
Lynn Williams Biyendolo confirms new name on jersey for 2025 (PSW)
Lynn Williams will go by Lynn Biyendolo after her marriage in the offseason, and that will be the name on the back of her jersey when she takes the field for the Seattle Reign this season.
Steven Birnbaum hired as DC Power FC Sporting Director (DP)
Congrats to Steven Birnbaum, who will take his first post-playing career job as DC Power sporting director.
Stay warm, y’all!
I’ve become a committed Patrick Agyemang fan. Donald, does he look as promising in person as he does on the TV?
He will get to play alongside Christian Benteke’s old teammate, Wilfried Zaha.
He is huge. He towered over everyone on the field, and it made you want to watch him. His movement is really good and I see the promise.
Thanks, Donald.
I see the promise too. I look forward to future playtime for him.
What’s weird is, Herculez Gomez compared him favorably to Brandon Vazquez, which to me, was trying to make fetch happen with the latter. BV is not dynamic, does not create for himself, and that’s what we’re excited about with Agyemang. That ability to hold off a defender and get close to goal is huge. I don’t think he’s in the top three for strikers when Pepi, Balogun, and Sargent are healthy, but he can do a job, and that job is making sure we can banish Vazquez to the “ridiculously undeserved hype” pile.
Our center back corps is improved, but still a little light numerically. We have Bartlett, Rowles, MacNaughton, and Tubbs, and Peltola or Antley could deputize back there, but that cannibalizes the depth at other positions.
LAFC just sent $300,000 in GAM and an international slot to FC Dallas for Nkosi Tafari, an American center back. That seems like a deal that DC could have done. They didn’t have the international slot to send, but they probably could have sent an equivalant amount of GAM (totaling $485,000). That would have been a really solid trio of MLS vets, plus an Australian international, and then a promising youngster. Finding playing time might have been difficult, but that would have been strong in case any one or two of them got hurt.
Basically, the dead wood of the roster has been pretty much completely cleared out (with the very notable exception of Klich’s DP designation). There have been some seemingly decent pieces added, but we’re still at only 24 players on the roster. They seem to act like they’re basically done building in this window, but there are still deals to be made and depth to be shored up, even if they aren’t looking for high end acquisitions until the summer.
To be fair, Lesesne did think there was another player or two coming in. Maybe just draft selections?
My goodness, the level of gaslighting that would be
I believe I read that all the other draft choices had returned to their schools, besides Hakim Karamoko of course. This is the right move for them, since their chance at making the roster was very slim, and playing time would have been an even taller order. They all have college eligibility left, and United has their MLS rights because of drafting them. Maybe they can finally get their act together and put together an MLS Next PRO team by next year where these guys could develop.
So, not the drafted players, but Goff has mentioned that there are two academy players in camp and a couple of young trialists. I suspect that whatever other signings are happening this window will come from this group. I don’t know for certain, but my suspicion is that the young trialists are likely USL guys. Mackay has signed quite a few of them in his tenure here, and Lesesne really likes them from his days in USL. So maybe a center back will come from there, basically filling the Hayden Sargis role. We also need a defensive midfielder, although it’s hard to see anyone from the reported crop in camp being an upgrade over Jeremy Garay.
Part of me really hopes one of the Trialists is Asad. I like him as a player, but just having a guy make the roster 4 different times would be hilarious from a stats perspective
He did get released by Cincy. But he’s 30, so I don’t know how useful he’d be as a starter.
And, next offseason, we can look forward to them clearing out the deadwood from this roster!!
We’ll see what the numbers are and how a lot of these question marks perform, but right now, nobody really strikes me as being massively overpaid. The biggest things to clear up are the Klich DP spot, and seeing if Leal is worth a damn.
Apparently Jackson Hopkins – whom Troy Lesesne took great pains to stress how confident he was in his return to full health – and Hakim Karamoko both underwent surgery and are now out for months.
Our depth is looking really close to 2024 again.
Woo can’t wait to have 4 subs with two being GKs…
Yep. Again, the one criticism I have of Lesesne is that he seems comfortable with a lean roster, to the point of refusing to play guys who are available. Let’s see if the team brings in another player or two.
Last year I sort of understood it initially, there were either transfer reasons or soccer reasons to it. But he should have his guys this year. If we have someone on the bench they have to be ready to play and he should give them a shot.
“bilateral muscle core surgery” does not sound good, but it is something I’ve never heard of before!! So, that’s exciting!!
Hey, I know this is well outside the bounds of soccer, but I care about this community and its members, so here goes:
There’s evidence that bird flu is the next big thing, and that the feds are not going to be providing helpful info this time. CDC has been ordered to cease all communications, including morbidity and mortality reports. There seems to be a freeze on medical activities within the gov overall- weird stuff going on at NIH, for sure.
My advice, tell those you care about to stock up a bit, and start thinking of alternatives to eggs and chicken for your diet.