Hopkins and Karamoko undergo surgery, Loudoun re-sign Nagy, and more: Friday Freedom Kicks
Happy Friday! It seems like things are finally warming up, and I look forward to being able to use the bottom two floors of my house again and maybe even going outside!
D.C. United injury woes continue with two more players having surgery (Washington Post)
Jackson Hopkins and Hakim Karamoko are undergoing surgery this week. No word yet on when the two will be able to return. It sounds to me like D.C. United are going to have to make some more signings.
Loudoun United Football Club announce re-signing of midfielder Alex Nagy through 2025 season with option for 2026 season (Loudoun United)
Nagy was only able to play three games for Loudoun over the past two seasons due to an ACL injury, so the team must have seen something special in him at training.
Also of note, Loudoun United have announced open tryouts in February. Those interested can sign up here.
On the women’s soccer side, Jason Anderson was at NWSL media day yesterday and reports that former Spirit Sam Staab is recovering well from her Achilles injury.
Eastern Conference: Most intriguing offseason moves so far (MLS)
Atlanta United keep getting praise for the Klich deal. D.C., please, do something to make it make more sense! Matt Doyle certainly thinks Ally Mackay has a reason for structuring things they way he did.
Preseason matches for both MLS and USL Championship have started, with D.C. United’s first this weekend. Most of the games won’t be available to watch on tv, but I’ll share some schedule links for anyone wanting to watch along.
MLS: https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/2025-mls-preseason-schedule-and-results
USL Championship: https://www.uslchampionship.com/preseason
Finally, for your Friday fun, some D.C. United training pics and video:
Have a good weekend!
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.
Do you have any links you’d recommend?
I mainly gleaned this from my nightly news viewing, namely Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow, but here’s a concise article about the communication freeze.
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/01/24/g-s1-44613/cdc-nih-hhs-health-data-mmwr
That this is all happening while bird farms are getting wiped out by bird flu makes me very concerned. It’s hard to be less transparent than halting scientific publication of data, which seems to be the point.
Goff has talked about how ownership is probably unwilling to spend its own money to buy out Klich. (And I think because he moved to another team, they can’t buy him out anyway for… reasons?)
Anyway, because he’s a DP, and United is keeping most of his salary on their books, it seems like ownership is already spending its own money, but to have him play for a conference rival. I guess what it is is that they don’t want to pay out that contract AND spend more money on a replacement DP. Either way, it’s shitty.
Apparently we should have just waived him, because Nashville did that with Leal and then when we claimed him, they were able to buy him out. Getting Leal – a fringe case DP – for basically nothing while keeping Klich’s – a fringe case DP – salary on our books kind of cancels things out. But yeah, it seems like somebody, either Klich or Troy, was really keen to get Klich off the roster. Or maybe Ally was just rabidly pursuing the clearance of the roster. Right now, Jackson Hopkins is the only player on the roster that Mackay didn’t personally sign or give a new contract too. Everybody else is his guy. Klich wasn’t, so maybe he had to go.
And Hopkins is on the injury list to start the season.
Didn’t we have a whole thread that talked about how DC can’t buy out Klich’s contract 1) because he’s not on the team anymore, 2) because it has to be “mutual” buyout agreement between player and club and most importantly 3) DC used up its buyout options for 2024 and 2024 already?
I was personally a fan of moving on from Klich. He can still play and create chances at a high enough level in MLS, but he doesn’t contribute on defense and is undisciplined in his positioning which were awful combos for Lesesne’s system. Add onto that how Klich had a knack for picking up dumb yellows and almost always jawing at the officials and trying to start something with opposing players. It’s just not the type of player I’d want on the team in its current state. DC is young and not very good so they need their experienced players to be leaders. Klich may very well thrive in ATL because he won’t necessarily have to be “the guy” like DC was hoping he’d be alongside Benteke.
The rules on the buyout were kind of reported piecemeal, and I’m still not 100% certain I understand them.
Basically, you used to be able to buy out one contract per season. In 2024, the team bought out Mohanad Jeahze’s contract. Also in 2024, Steven Birnbaum retired. For some wacky reason, retirement didn’t negate his cap hit in 2025, based on the extension he signed in 2023. So, the team used their 2025 buyout on Steven Birnbaum.
Then they became determined to move on from Klich, whether for their own reasons or Klich’s request. Eventually they traded him to Atlanta for a first round draft pick and the agreement to pay $300,000 of his salary. The rest of his salary AND his DP designation would remain on DC’s books.
Then rule changes were announced that said that MLS teams could buy out a second contract. Perfect way to clear up the Klich mess! Except… because he’d been traded to another team, they couldn’t use their second buyout on him. For… reasons. Meanwhile, Nashville had waived Randall Leal, with DC signing him off of waivers. DC would pay $100,000 of his salary, while the rest of his nearly $1 million or so would stay on Nashville’s books. Seemed like a good reflection to the Klich affair. Except Nashville was able to buy out Leal’s contract, because he had gone through waivers or something.
At first blush, this seemed like really bad luck for Ally Mackay. The goal was to get out of Klich’s contract, with Goff reporting that “everything was on the table.” He managed to move him in what seemed like a bad deal, and then seemed even worse when MLS announced that the teams could now just buy out a second contract. But Goff then reported that these changes were in the works for awhile and everyone knew what was coming. So, United could have just sat tight on Klich until the rule changes were announced and then bought him out, but then Goff said that despite “everything” being on the table, they weren’t going to buy him out. Not because they couldn’t, as initially appeared, but because they didn’t want to. They would rather pay him to play for a conference rival, and be unable to employ another DP in his place.
It seems like an incredible slap in the face as a fan. Rarely has the front office’s apathy towards fielding the most competitive team possible been more overt. And it’s made all the harder to swallow as another half dozen problematic DPs around MLS have been offloaded to foreign leagues (or to Montreal in Dante Vanzeir’s case).
I can swallow a whole lot of MLS-being-MLS, but this might have been even too much MLS for me. The whole thing stinks, seems really capricious, and makes it hard to know exactly where to cast blame, although it seems like everybody probably has some blame that they’re due. If the owners don’t want to spend their own money on making the team competitive, then I don’t feel particularly obligated to spend my own money supporting this uncompetitive team.
This right here. Unfortunately, I decided to reinvest in DCU for 2025, primarily because just before the renewal deadline, we learned that Club World Cup games would be played at Audi Field (Probably just tentative, depending on field conditions). I decided to re-up for a year — partly to get priority to those games, which turned out to be some really uninspiring match-ups. That wasn’t the team’s fault, but does fill me with even greater regret over my decision to re-up as an STH.
The Klich maneuver? Disastrous. Each and every year my distaste grows for this ownership and their attitude to the team and its fans, including season ticket holders. A breaking point is fast approaching.
You know I’ve been at it since 96, and I regret doing my season tix this year. I hope I am proven wrong. I can fly to Glasgow and watch Celtic v Rangers in each stadium lux suites, hotel, meals, for the same money. I will always be able to buy seats at Audi. It’s basic math. It’s like taxes, I guess. I hate feeling this grim.
Sorry, I think it was Vrioni that went to Montreal, not Vanzeir.
The Birnbaum situation reminds me of a similar DC player’s situation from the past — Chris Rolfe. Both stopped playing for medical reasons, and both had time left on their contracts. The only real difference is that Steven straight up retired, while Rolfe just sort of disappeared for like a year and a half. He was still very much on the roster, but there was no intention of ever playing him. And then he retied once he got to the end of his contract. So with both of those, it seems as though if a player retires while they still have time left on their contract, they still occupy that roster spot and any cap hit until their contract runs out. I guess that’s a way to prevent players from “retiring” to leave a team to then just go sign somewhere else as a way of skirting the rules (I think about what Gronkowski did in the NFL, where he “retired” from the Patriots, but then decided to come back later as a free agent). So, not great, but it at least seems to be something consistent that MLS has done in the past
Deion Sanders, Skins, booth, Ravens……
It does feel at times that the owners buying someone out to make the team competitive is just a percentage of the eventual sale of the whole shebang that they’ll be missing out on, and they want to scrape the bowl for the last taste of that sale money. I was relieved when they hired Mackay as a nanny to care for our sweet baby of a club, but they seem to balk at cough medicine. Diapers and discount food only.
I have never been in a position to deck myself out in merch and get season tickets, but if that does happen for me in the future, I’m more likely to go Spirit if this level of negligence continues.
The newest episode of Pitch Pass that came out yesterday is a really interesting listen. It has Travis Clark from TopDrawerSoccer as a guest and focuses mostly on academy and youth related things for DC. In it, it sounds like they’ve figured out the 2 academy kids that are with the first team in preseason, and give reasons as to why Turner and Jones may not have been included.
One of the more interesting points that Clark brought up was in relation to the MLS Next Pro team (or lack thereof). From his view, while it would be good for DC to have a team, he doesn’t think not having one is actually hindering them all that much. The general consensus seems to be that, at least for academy players, going to strong D1 college programs is actually a better way for them to develop than what Next Pro provides, due to the level of competition.
It would seem to make the draft more valuable. Some of our later round guys could go play there, and potentially develop. We wouldn’t necessarily have to have signed Hakim Karamoko to a first team deal. Other teams seem to be getting some really impactful contributions from folks that have spent some pretty decent time on their second team first.
In old friend news, long time Spirit player Tori Hunter was announced as the NWSL Players Association deputy executive director.
https://www.nwslplayers.com/news/tori-huster-appointed-as-deputy-executive-director-of-the-nwsl-players-association
I love this move for her. She’s done such good work there already
I have a lot of thoughts about this year, and I refuse to bring anybody down with them. This looks entirely grim. I am glad we have a back line (until it too becomes injured in a bizarre microwave explosion).
You like the USL? Just come to Audi field and have your fill.
There are still plenty of decent free agents…decent in that they can play bit roles for the team. Definitely not suitable for 2/3s of a season of starts.
Yea I agree. I don’t mind Ally and Lesesne’s approach to scrap the whole roster, but in my opinion it’s very very difficult to rebuild an entire team in one offseason. It doesn’t help that MLS’ offseason coincides with the not so busy January window in world soccer, either.
“Bizarre microwave explosion”? Personally, I prefer the line from Jerry McGuire: “Tragic bass fishing accident.”
Thank you, JoeW. Much more powerful.
Hassani Dotson wants a trade away from Minnesota. I wouldn’t be opposed to it (though I don’t think him coming to DC is likely).