Pepi breaks arm, Enow transfer official, and more: Monday Freedom Kicks
Happy Monday, everyone. There were quite a few stories from the weekend, but we start with the one on the USMNT front:
USMNT striker Ricardo Pepi suffers gruesome arm injury with PSV (PSW)
Ugh. Ricardo Pepi snaps his arm while scoring a goal for PSV. Sounds like he will be out for 2 months after having surgery to fix it.
The Boris Enow transfer to Beitar Jerusalem is complete, with Beitar having already announced it back on Christmas Eve. However, because DC United didn’t make the playoffs, this apparently was a free transfer.
For DC Power, Claire Constant has signed a contract extension to remain with the club through next season. I’m extremely happy that Claire will continue with this club.
San Diego FC moving on from Mexico star Hirving Lozano (PSW)
Chucky Lozano will be looking for a new club this offseason as San Diego FC has indicated he is not a part of their future plans.
Biggest FA Cup upset ever? Sixth-tier Macclesfield stuns champ Crystal Palace (PSW)
Arguably the greatest FA Cup upset ever happened yesterday as Macclesfield becomes the first non-league team in 117 to unseat the defending FA Cup champions. And, Macclesfield is coached by none other than John Rooney, the younger brother of Wayne Rooney!
Salah fires Egypt past AFCON champions Ivory Coast, set for Mane-Senegal reunion in semifinal (ESPN)
The Africa Cup of Nations semifinals are set: Egypt vs. Senegal and Morocco vs. Nigeria. They should be terrific ones.
Former DCU homegrown Kevin Paredes is back on the field! Hopefully his injury spell is behind him and he can start getting some minutes again.
Georgia Stanway might be headed to London this summer as she is set to leave Bayern Munich at the end of the season.
MLS players support plan to align with international calendar (ESPN)
Fall-spring schedule with a winter break? Seems like the MLS players are in favor of the league’s plan to change the schedule format beginning next year.
Finally, check out this foul by an Indonesian player. My GOODNESS.
I thought that would kickstart your week, so let’s have a good one!
“kickstart your day”–I see what you did there.
Man, I hope Paredes gets healthy.
Heaps just announced that she’s joining Denver Summit FC in the summer! Big move for the NWSL
The fact they’re not doing Apertura/Clausura format and instead trying to ape the European leagues is my issue with the schedule considering how long the breaks will be.
Tom Bogert is reporting that New England is paying $400K to Westerlo for Griffin Yow. Just for comparison’s sake, we paid $400K for Hosei Kijima.
New England Revolution home of the DC United Homegrown player come home from Europe.
That was 400k GAM, and I think GAM has a roughly 2:1 GAM:Dollar ratio, so really its like we paid $800k for Kijima and NE is paying $400k for Yow.
(Will note that I like Kijima, though the 400k GAM was a lot, and I don’t think Yow wanted to come back here anyway)
I’m indifferent on him coming back to another team. If he’s grow up to become a dangerous MLS attacker, it wasn’t going to happen with us. Kijima started out ok until everything fell apart (and probably wasn’t suited to whatever it is the coaches asked of him most of the season).
And on another note, we’ll see how Mitrović’s strategy of putting together a bunch of youth national team players in a club works out for them. He’s probably got to do that even if it wasn’t plan A since Porter turned over much of the team and was subsequently fired, so there’s some money tied up.
DC has been posting some pictures/short videos from the first training today. Someone asked to see the rookies, and DC posted a picture of 4 of them. Of note, Markovic and Aman have training gear with numbers on them, implying that, as expected, they have fully signed with the team.
Markovic took #27, Aman took #18. From over the weekend, we also know that Segal now has #14. Sean Johnson seemingly has taken the #1 from Joon. Avilez seems to be #32, though its hard to see so I could be wrong.