Amorim sacked by Manchester United, DC United sign Segal, and more: Monday Freedom Kicks
Merry New Year!! Let’s hope 2026 is the best for us, and on the soccer front, it could be the most important (and definitely busiest) in American history! First, a word from Billy Ray Valentine:
Ruben Amorim sacked as Man United head coach after 14 months (ESPN)
Manchester United moves on from Ruben Amorim…who they want to bring in next to handle their club is anyone’s guess.
D.C. United Signs Former Houston Dynamo FC Forward Gabriel Segal (DCU)
The forward joins the Black-and-Red from Houston, as DC acquired him in the Re-Entry Draft. And it sounds like Louis Munteanu will soon be announced by the club.
Cluj is negotiating the sale of Meriton Korenica for a staggering figure (Telegrafi)
Munteanu may not be headed to DC United alone. According to reports out of Europe, his teammate Meriton Korenica could also be headed to the Black-and-Red, with a reported transfer fee exceeding $4 million.
Numbers Only: The DCU Offseason (DP)
The homie Blasian drops some numbers about DC United’s 2025!
USA Soccercast, Episode 168: Predicting what our national teams will do in 2026! (SSFC)
As I do every year, I make some predictions about what the USMNT and USWNT will do in the new year. Listen in while I explain myself!
2026 MLS Official Match Ball unveiled (MLS)
New year, new league ball. What do we think?
U.S. Under-16 Girls’ National Team Will Travel to Spain for a Training Camp and Three Matches (USSF)
DC Power’s Valentina Perrotta makes the roster for the US U-16 WNT as they head to Europe for three matches.
LA Galaxy’s Riqui Puig will miss the entire 2026 season as he has undergone a second surgery on his ACL.
OL Lyonnes defender Kysha Sylla loaned to Paris FC (L’Equipe)
Kysha Sylla is headed from one capital to another on loan. After her season with the Spirit, she will play for Paris FC this season on loan from OL Lyonnes.
Paris Saint-Germain win first Ligue 1 Paris derby since 1978 (ESPN)
The closest rivalry between 2 teams who play in separate stadiums took place over the weekend for the first time in the top flight since 1978. Advantage PSG as they won 2-1.
Let’s make this week and this year a great one, y’all!
We’re gonna pay somewhere between $11M – $15M to import the attacking core of *checks notes* the 11th best team in the Romanian league.
Korenica just turned 29 and has apparently never played at a higher level than Liga I.
It looked like they were doing well, there, for a little while. I was starting to have something akin to a bit of hope.
*puts hope back into the box* Settle down now. Take another nap.
(I mean, it’s not impossible that this will in some sense work. Munteanu is young and you have to overpay to pry that out of Europe. Korenica has good productivity over the last 18 months, assuming he’s not an attack-only kind of guy. They can’t possibly be handing Korenica the third DP slot… no, let’s pull back there, I’m going to assume for purposes of this post that they’re not so absurdly stupid as to hand Korenica the third DP slot. So it could just be profligate use of ownership’s money without hurting the club’s cap structure. But, still. The optics are sus.)
I had a random brain connection when I heard we’re getting a second DP from the same Romanian club.
There’s a line from the Oscar Wilde farce, The Importance of Being Earnest, where the matriarch (who has traditionally been played in drag by a gay male who has trod the boards forever) delivers the following line:
“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
Now, obviously, this is a ridiculous way to describe the experience of an orphan, but this situation did make me think of it. Signing one player from the Romanian league sorta out of the blue with a good age profile for a lot of money might be a real find and a smart move in the transfer window. When two massive money moves are from the same mid-table Romanian club, that’s a little alarming and undercuts the original premise.
Apologies, btw, my theater degree is a burden to us all
I feel like there’s at least some merit to getting a guy that has some familiarity feeding the poacher that we also just purchased. Kinda like Miami getting Jordi Alba to help Messi (not saying our guys are at that level at all, but a similar train of thought at least). They both still have to learn about the league, but they don’t have to learn about each other. That being said, I was also hoping that the 3rd DP would be someone with maybe a bit of a better pedigree. Part of me has to wonder about the transfer fee we paid to get Munteanu. The $7M announced is much, much lower than what Cluj originally wanted to sell him for. Maybe there was some sort of agreement between DC and Cluj akin to “cut us a deal on Munteanu and we promise we’ll also sign another player.”
Also, for those curious, I looked up Korenica on EAFC to try to get a basic feel for what he might bring (so take these numbers with a BIG grain of salt), but: He’s got a 68 rating currently, though that is somewhat lowered by his current form. For reference, Peglow and Stroud both are rated at 67. What stood out to me though was his speed. Korenica is significantly faster than every single player that played for DC last season. I have a hunch Kurokawa could be quicker, but he’s not in the game to check yet.
DC has now fully announced the Munteanu signing. Confirms $7M fee, contract through 28/29 with a team option for 29/30, denoted as DP specifically, announcement does not say Young DP
I’ve never heard an explanation for why he didn’t get the young DP tag.
Which leads me to speculate that the owners wanted to optics of announcing a main record signing, and didn’t want to be pressured to fill a senior DP spot with yet another player
I dug into it a bit in Friday’s FK comments, but I think there’s a chance he’s too old to be classified as a Young DP. The wording is vague, but after reading through the rules a bit more, I think he would have had to have been 22 right now to count as a Young DP, instead of the 23 that he is.
I think this is it.
I am suddenly less hopeful for the season.
Coachella is in about a month, so I guess training camp will start soon. Hopefully, preseason will bring it all together.
Article on Munteanu has been published:
https://thedistrictpress.com/2026/01/05/dc-united-sign-louis-munteanu-to-designated-player-contract-in-club-record-transfer/
I’m not down on the potential signing of Korenica, although it would be tremendous if he wasn’t a DP (shades of what I said about Klich). These lines from the linked article stood out, though.
This sure seems similar to the Caden Clark acquisition, and I’m hopeful that Sogut and Weiler are doing more due diligence than just seeing a guy in a match and being impressed.
Two guys from the same team is curious. There is ambition here, but I wonder if it is reckless in nature. Hoping for the best.
Its certainly a more of a commitment than the 2024 offseason, where the strategy seemed to be “get some USL guys and pay Klich to go somewhere else”
Hard to argue with that.
Rumor of Jun Hong in talks to be loaned to K2 Suwon Samsung for 1 year. If true, its good.
Yes, that would be good, and probably (hopefully) good for Joon too. It would leave us needing to get a third goalkeeper, and as a fan I would certainly be open to seeing if Luis Barraza had any interest in coming back. He was initially a backup when he came last year, and ended up winning the starting role. If Johnson falters at all, Barraza can be there to step in again. I’m not sure what shot at a starting role he has elsewhere.
Hopefully he got his knee looked at. I’d imagine that was probably limiting for him even though he did ok with shot stopping given our defensive circumstances.
As far as solid and cheap backups go, David Bingham is also still floating around the free agent market, I believe. He only made ~$100k last year with Charlotte, compared to Barraza’s ~$180k, so that could be a play (though our presumed starter and second string would both be quite old if that were the case)
Joon Hong needed to be moved. A disaster of an acquisition.
I don’t really blame Joon for the situation.
I remember him showing some remarkable reaction saves at times. He was inexperienced and just getting started, and this could have been a big opportunity for him. But the fact that he was being handed the starting role should have tipped him and the fans off that our roster was being built on the cheap and would be thin, weak, and non competitive. There was also a widespread shift in the global game that even reached us that meant the philosophy long espoused by RedBull as a way to overperform on the field with high energy pressing players that were also on the cheaper side… last year it became clear that clubs had figured out how to annihilate that approach, bypass it entirely. Joon suddenly was forced into a situation where he was trying desperately to bail out a bad squad playing a failing idea, and that was never going to work out for anybody( but especially a green prospect.
I do think it’s better for him and the club to press the reset button, but I don’t think he was inept
Agree with the term “reset.”
Still, he seemed like a deer in the headlights.
Certainly agree with bad squad and failing idea offering.
Yeah, I think being left to dry even at current MLS level is stunning when you don’t have the experience and mental muscle memory to deal with it. So while he definitely had some moments where he looked entirely bewildered, I think that wasn’t his ability.
I have no idea what his true talent level or potential are, and who knows where he finishes as a pro, but we certainly weren’t going to find out what him at his stable best was last season, and he deserves a break.
Largely agreed here. Will also note that in general, U22 players aren’t necessarily supposed to be immediate home runs (though there are some that end up being that, obviously). A main point of the U22 slots is to bring in young and promising, but generally unproven, players to develop and then sell on, with the other option being rewarding guys like young homegrowns that have performed well with a big contract (see: KDP). Joon could still become good, but he certainly was not put in a position to succeed last year (nor was any goalie on the team). Honestly, I kinda still hope it works out with him and he gains back his confidence; he could certainly still become something. But a loan might be the best way to do that for now.
Yeah, loan for now, reassess next season