USL Championship season starts, 64-team World Cup considered, and more: Friday Freedom Kicks
Happy Friday! All four of our covered teams have games this weekend (although the Spirit are not yet in regular season), and, for me, nothing to do all weekend but watch (and write my recap.) Let’s get to it!
USWNT remains atop FIFA world rankings (Stars and Stripes FC)
Despite their failure to win the She Believes tournament, the US women stayed on top. I am glad to see Japan’s climb to number five, too.
World Cup: FIFA to consider one-off 64-team tournament in 2030 (ESPN)
Deep sigh
D.C. United’s new keeper, Kim Joon Hong, won Save of the Month for a quick save against Toronto FC.
Unfortunately, Joon couldn’t save D.C. United from an accidental(?) retweet of an Elon Musk post yesterday, for which the team later apologized.
Loudoun United 2025 season preview (The DP)
Ryan Keefer gives us a rundown of Loudoun United’s offseason moves (or lack thereof) and shares some thoughts on how they’ll line up in their season opener this weekend.
USL Championship Power Rankings – Preseason (USL Championship)
Unfortunately, the league’s writers are taking a similarly pessimistic view of Loudoun.
NWSL’s new docuseries focuses on players’ competitiveness and passion on the field (The Athletic $)
I got an opportunity to watch screeners of the NWSL docuseries, “For the Win” before it came out, and I agree with some of the criticism I’ve seen that it was a little directionless early on. There are a good number of interviews with Spirit players, though, and a good way to get prepped for the start of this season if you’re a new fan.
Finally, the schedule of events for the weekend. Look how many games are on here! Soccer is back!!
| Teams | When | Where | Watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Washington Spirit vs. Orlando Pride | Fri., Mar. 7 at 8 p.m. ET | Orlando, FL | Prime |
| Old Glory DC vs. Anthem Rugby Carolina | Sat., Mar. 8 at 3 p.m. ET | Boyds, MD | MNMT, ESPN+ |
| D.C. United vs. Sporting Kansas City | Sat., Mar. 8 at 7:30 p.m. ET | Washington, DC | MLS Season Pass |
| Loudoun United FC vs. Birmingham Legion FC | Sat., Mar. 8 at 8 p.m. ET | Birmingham, AL | ESPN+ |
| DC Power FC vs. Lexington SC | Sun., Mar. 9 at 2 p.m. ET | Washington, DC | Peacock |
Twitter is just so, so gross these days. I’ve barely spent any time there for months now. It would be nice if the team got a Bluesky account too, but I can make do without it.
Not to mention the one city that Elon Musk is really negatively impacting more than any other these days is DC.
There are 8 teams in MLS (not counting DC) that Christian Benteke does not have a goal or an assist against. Sporting Kansas City is one of those, so hopefully he can tick that team off his list on Saturday. I’m feeling good about his chances!
Damn it why do OGDC and DCU have to be on at the same time…guess I’ll be 2 screening it.
Editing error by me! The Old Glory game is actually at 3 p.m., so you should be able to watch both. Chart is updated now
Oh good that’s what I thought. Still I like the ability to be able to dual screen…I know I’ll end up doing that at some point later in the season.
MLS released the GAM amounts for each team for 2025. DC has roughly $122k. For reference, there are 5 teams with over $3 Million in GAM (Houston, Miami, Minnesota, RSL, and then NYC has over $4 Million). DC appears to have the 3rd least amount, only above Cincy (~$6k) and the Galaxy ($0.00).
MLS released that GAM-on-hand totals of all the teams. DC’s is third lowest in the league, with $122,558. Given their 3 DP model, they won’t be adding any GAM (at least in the first half of the year). I’m pretty curious about where all that GAM went. It seemed like they had a decent amount at the beginning of the offseason (around $2.5 million), and then also made sales of Matai Akinmboni and Ted Ku-DiPietro for what should be a little more than another $2 million. But I guess the proceeds from those sales didn’t necessarily become GAM. They could have used it for other operational costs.
United spent $700,000 on getting Joao Peglow, $400,000 on getting Hosei Kijima, and something like $50-100,000 on getting Luis Barraza, Jordan Farr, and Lukas MacNaughton. That comes to about half of the initial $2.5 million, and I guess you could kind of squint and see how getting Kye Rowles and Kim Joon Hong would combine for most of the rest of that second half.
I would definitely like some deeper reporting on this. At first blush, it looks like the ownership isn’t maximizing its ability to provide resources to building the roster (perhaps not applying proceeds from player sales to GAM, definitely not adding in their own money to provide additional GAM in a 2/4/$2 million roster model, definitely not maxing out DPs and U-22s).
It’s also not great GAM and be rolled over now, but we don’t really have any to roll over. There could be some coming from a sale of Kristian Fletcher, but we’re also not entirely sure that those proceeds are going back into roster construction. Or if it is, then we need to take a closer look at Ally Mackay’s ability to construct a roster.
From what I know, I think the conversion of Homegrown player sales to GAM is discretionary. And I haven’t actually seen anything outlining whether or not the intra-league cash sales can add to GAM or not. So it seems possible at least that the KDP sale didn’t actually gain them any GAM, and the Akinmbony sale may or may not have been converted to GAM. I’ll note that with the KDP trade, the league roster rules says the following:
“For a player declared a non-discretionary player (i.e., non-DP, non-U22 Initiative Player) by the acquiring club, the former club trading the player away must convert its received cash to GAM. For a player declared a U22 Initiative Player or DP by the acquiring club, the former club may convert its received cash to GAM.”
That to me would imply that at least for Ted, since he’s still a U22 for Colorado, there was no mandate for the team to convert any money to GAM. If he had been a regular player for Colorado, then the entirety of his transfer would have had to have been converted to GAM. So its hard to say, but indications point to the team not maximizing GAM, rather than Ally just spending it all
I mean, regardless of how the money was spent already, it’s looking pretty bleak for how we’re supposed to reinforce this roster. Houston and RSL also jettisoned a bunch of players (and big ones, at that), but are in a position to make big moves. We’re pretty much all-in on the team just getting better with more games and training (and no injuries).
Ahead of the DC Power spring home opener, check out this article on the evolution of their jerseys and why they’ve had 5 (yes 5) sets of jerseys so far this year.
https://thedistrictpress.com/2025/03/06/the-evolution-of-dc-power-fcs-jersey-identity/
It’s a good article, and I like that energy design jersey quite a bit. But the whole thing still seemed to point out that the team (league?) really didn’t have a lot of stuff worked out yet.
I guess the thing I’ll comment on today is, I hate the diaspora of NWSL viewership. I would like it to be one service, and decide whether I want it. I’m not over the moon with Apple, but at least it’s consistent. Anyway, end of gripe.
Old Glory DC is hosting a watch party for Scotland vs Wales at the Maryland Soccerplex tomorrow ahead of the game using the big screen. Watch party doors open at 11:15 AM.