The Mundial Mascots have never been a big deal to me but yeah, you’d figure with 3 options, the odds were they’d get at least one of them right or attractive in some manner. Nope.

The MLS roster profiles updated to show the amount of GAM each team has, while noting that GAM no longer expires (with the exception of the 4 U22 model GAM). DC currently has a GAM total of $718,569. Looking through the rest of the teams, this seems to be about a mid-pack number. Cincy and Portland (???) have $0 left, while Minnesota has over $5 Million. Miami and LAFC somehow both have over $2 Million left

I was just thinking about how much of DC’s salary cap was taken up with Mateusz Klich’s wages. They got about $300,000 in relief from Atlanta, but that still would have left about a $375,000 cap hit, and ownership responsible for the rest of his DP wages. That is going to be helpful to have coming off the books, because there’s really not many other great options for opening up spaces for big contributors next year.

Here are the players whose contracts expire at the end of 2025:

Benteke
Clark
Pirani
Antley
Barraza (no option)
Leal
Dodson
MacNaughton (no option)
Fletcher
Hopkins
Kijima
Tubbs
Zouhir

Looking at that list, Leal seems like the only one that for sure will be gone. He’s contributed basically nothing, and has a big salary number that would be entirely DC’s responsibility this year. I think there’s a pretty decent argument to be made that it would be better to move on from Benteke, but the WTOP interview makes it clear that they’re trying to keep him around. He’s the second leading scorer in club history behind only Jaime Moreno, so there’s some sense there, too.

They just spent $700,000 to get Caden Clark, so one assumes that he’s in their plans for next year, but he’s only played about 30 minutes for the team so far, and has seemed to be more interested in heading to Europe. It would be pretty funny if he’s not back, if nothing else. Pirani is a similar case to Benteke. There’s a good case to be made that the team would be better off moving on from him, but if we do get 2-3 more attackers that are better than him, then he becomes a pretty decent luxury piece to have, and is honestly producing at about a median level for U-22 signings leaguewide.

Antley is decent, cheap, and versatile. I’d imagine they re-sign him. I kind of think they bring back Dodson too for similar reasons, but he could also be gone. MacNaughton hasn’t really shown enough to be earning a new contract, and I would also hope that one of the goals this offseason is to be signing another Rowles-or-better level center back. That could potentially doom Tubbs as well, especially if we land a good CB prospect in the draft or something. I’d like Tubbs to stick around, but it’s no sure thing.

Both homegrowns are probably likely to stick around. Jackson Hopkins has flourished more than anyone else under Rene Weiler, but it’s possible that Kristian Fletcher pushes to leave for a new situation. Hosei Kijima is similar to Clark, in that the club paid a bunch to get him, but then has also seen limited playing time under Weiler. Still, he’s good depth, and got his green card.

Luis Barraza has played well enough that he probably has earned a new contract. There’s enough else to fix that goalie is probably further down the list of needs. But he’s the one part of the keeper corps that’s out of contract, and it’s possible that Sogut and Weiler have eyes on a European keeper they want to bring in or something.

And lastly there’s Rida Zouhir. He could stay. He could go. It doesn’t make a ton of difference.

Basically, the point of all this is that it’s fine for ownership to say they want to bring in a bunch of new players. But their options at this point are basically bringing in two new DPs, since they want to keep Benteke. Now, that could maybe go a long way to making the rest of the offense look better, and a better offense could take some of the heat off of the defense. But both of those DP players would need to hit, and DC doesn’t really have a habit of supporting their managers with DP signings. And a lot of the ones they do sign (Peltola, Palsson) are just given that designation to manage their cap hit. We’ll also see if ownership is willing to buy out some players (Badji? Stroud?) to free up some space. But they’re in a pretty bad space now where they can sign a couple difference makers, but then need guys on the team like Enow, Peltola, Kim, and Pirani (if they pick him up) to really raise their levels if the team wants to be good.