NWSL Legend Departs, AFCON Final Fallout Continues, and more: Tuesday Freedom Kicks
Morning folks! It’s a glorious Tuesday in the nation’s capital! My trivia team is preparing tonight to defend our title from last week at the local bar. What’s your category of expertise you bring to the trivia table? Obviously mine is soccer but I’m pretty solid on global politics and geography!
Anyways, let’s dive in to the footy!
Morocco to pursue legal action over chaotic end to Africa Cup of Nations final (The Guardian)
The story that keeps on giving. As Donald mentioned in yesterday’s Freedom Kicks, this was a final for the ages, but not necessarily for the football. The fallout continues as Morocco threatens Senegal with legal action (though I doubt this really goes anywhere). It really is astounding to see Morocco go from World Cup darlings to AFCON villains.
Liverpool sign North Carolina Courage legend Denise O’Sullivan (ESPN)
There’s been a ton of movement between the NWSL and the WSL this offseason. The captain of the Courage is the latest to make the move. She has been in North Caroline since 2017 amassing 180 appearances for the team.
Ayo Oke gets first USWNT call-up, replacing Avery Patterson (USA Today)
Admittedly I’ve never watched Oke play but it’s exciting to see a new potential USWNT star emerging. Emma Hayes continues to explore the roster the depth possibilities in the penultimate year before the World Cup.
The Hey Spirits Crew gets an update on the HIP situation from the head of the NWSL Players Association. Meghann Burke has been making the rounds on podcasts while the NWSL leadership stays noticeably quiet…
…and it’s telling that publications all over the US and the globe are talking about Rodman’s contract.
France forward Cascarino joins London City Lionesses (BBC)
Kang playing 5D chess here and weakening the Spirit’s rivals while simultaneously improving her English team… or Delphine just wanted to be closer to home. Also, no transfer fee is crazy work.
Now the numbers may seem small compared to the mens game but the overall trajectory shows what we’ve been saying all along; owning a womens soccer team is not charity work, there’s big bucks involved now.
Inter Miami fully acquire Tadeo Allende from Celta de Vigo (MLS)
Hmmm a 4 year deal with an option for a 5th. This explains how Inter Miami is able to skirt around the MLS salary cap rules. Seems similar to how Chelsea offer all of their young players 7 or 8 year contracts (remember Mudryk?). Allegedly, they ain’t done yet. Anyways, maybe Erkut Sogut and co can figure out some creative accounting tools to help DCU sign some players.
This was the spiciest goal of the weekend for me
Finally, the Hatch family welcomed a baby boy to the family! Congrats!
Alright, that’s all from me folks! Stay warm today!
I remember several years ago when I was a volunteer for the Spirit on game days, back in the SoccerPlex days. I was sitting next to one of the guys from ticket sales or something, and it turned out he was married to Ashley Hatch. Anyway, congratulations to him, Ashley, and Leo!
It’s been awhile since I’ve gone out to pub trivia, but I used to be pretty decent at it. I’ve even won entirely by myself (I had invited a girl from a dating app out, but she stood me up. Missed out on a $50 bar tab, darlin’!).
It used to be that I really rued the category of 90s Nickelodeon shows, because I grew up in a household without cable. But these days, I find myself being really terrible at music rounds. What do you mean that they kept putting out new music after 2008?
Any human that tells you their music taste didn’t calcify at 14 or 15 is friggin lying to you and themselves. I see to any try-hard trying to act like their favorite music is whatever is currently relevant and in vogue as they get older, and the act is thin as hell.
I think I’d be pretty solid on mythology in a trivia thing. Love soccer and film, but I’m not gonna pretend like I know everything that happened in those areas more than 10 years before I was born.
For trivia experience, I lived through the 70s. That alone should qualify me for a permanent Go Fund Me page.
Yeah, let’s not pretend like we’re not pleased as punch for Hatch and her partner. She’s gonna be great.
BTW, hope she keeps up the Instagram advice channel, her tips for soccer improvement technique are excellent and applicable.
That said, she’s likely going to have to go on hiatus till her newborn becomes more of a person- I’m sorry, newborns are aliens for a bit
CFR Cluj was supposedly under some really stringent financial difficulties, and were trying to sell players to raise revenue (including Louis Munteanu). There had also been the rumors about Meriton Korenica moving to DC. It looks like he’s still at Cluj and hasn’t been sold anywhere. I would be interested in offering Cluj like $2 million for him for a two year deal. Bring him on board as a TAM player, not a DP. We have some international slots open, especially with Joon going on loan. Get him and a third DP in the midfield, and things are looking better.
If we were gonna spend a few million on a 29 year old to make a TAM player, we could almost certainly do better than Korenica. There are a ton of players in the European market with this age profile who the club want to cash out on while they still can in order to invest in their inevitable replacement.
I imagine Sogut and Weiler continue to look, but if those are the parameters, it’s not limited to Cluj or even the Romanian league. There’s be a ton of clubs eager to talk.
That said, I do kind of wonder what roster model DC is going to go with. Steve Kaplan had said they were going to fill all three DP slots, and I’m totally fine with that approach. However, after reading a bit more about the $2 million discretional GAM you can get with going with 2 DPs, that allows you to spend that $2 million (which doesn’t roll over), and maybe save up some of the other GAM that you have on hand, which CAN roll over to the next year. This has allowed some teams like Minnesota to have absolute ridiculous amounts of GAM.
Now, DC should have been in the 2 DP/4 U22/$2M GAM model last year, since they never filled the third DP slot. They would have been able to use that $2 million in discretionary GAM and roll over more of their unused regular GAM to this year. Instead, whatever GAM they had, they used. And they ended up not having too much GAM to roll over. So that was just a complete mismanagement of resources, but it’s worth remembering that Mackay wanted to be in the 2 DP model, but Jason Levien overrode that to keep the third DP slot open to sign Paul Pogba. But there’s also a chance midseason to change roster models, so they could have gotten access to $1 million of discretionary GAM, and still passed on that to leave that 3rd DP slot unused.
So anyway, we now have two DPs, and those are locked in for several years. Obviously, we would like to be a better team this year, but the roster still has a long way to go. Is it better to punt this season while giving some more time to our youth players (and a 4th U22 that we could bring in) while storing up GAM to roll over into 2027 and hopefully sign a third DP then and trying to be stronger then? I wouldn’t hate that approach.
The owners can’t afford to punt this season, and that’s entirely their own fault. Fans were incredibly willing to give the last rebuild a go, but clearly thought that hiring Mackay and Lesesne were good enough signals to the fans that they wanted to get better. We maybe could have, but they declined the investment part of the equation.
They can’t afford another four, non competitive season. The fans are ready to bail.
Well, there’s a good chance that the results don’t come this season, even if they do sign a third DP. So, good luck to ownership, I guess.
Oh, I’m not going to bet any money on the idea that this ownership group will create the conditions for a successful team, I’m just saying fan tolerance is hanging by a frayed thread.
They absolutely should have never gotten here.
To get me to bail on season tickets after 30 years took a great deal of corporate futility and neglect.
in retrospect the Lesesne Mackay moves were a cheapout. What followed was players who also were young but also cheap and didn’t meet MLS standards. For the first time I can remember, it was painful watching the team.
The owners seem to have gotten the message but should not view this as a one-off situation in which they spend for one year and go back to the same old, same old.
Times have changed and team are getting better year by year. They need to keep this going over multiple years to catch up.
Having said that, I like the moves so far. There will not be an instant turn-around, but at least the team will not look like a USL side.
For sure, but at the same time, I’m not convinced we’ll have the infrastructure to raise the floor of the floor/ceiling dynamic for the team to be competitive consistently as long as it’s Levien and Kaplan.
This is all a cost/benefit analysis for them, and fan satisfaction is only relevant now because the number is plummeting in such a way that it’s finally affecting their equation.
I just don’t know how likely it is we find a much more dedicated owner, cuz they would have to make this whole venture, stadium and real estate development included, worth it to these jackasses.
Any idea how many season ticket holders bailed this time?
I was going to post about this, because I read something about this last week. It seems if you CHOOSE the 2 DP model, you get GAM that does not roll over. But, if you choose the 3 DP model, but don’t USE all 3 DP slots, there’s a big GAM number that DOES roll over. It might explain why DCU did that last year. Provided them with additional GAM this year — and wouldn’t be surprised if they do the same again.
Deleted.
DC makes the Kim Joon Hong loan official, noting that the loan is through the end of the 2026 season with a purchase option
Seems like the best solution all around. Joon gets a shot at playing time. He can rebuild his confidence, and either return to DC ready to take over from Sean Johnson, or he does so well that the purchase option is exercised, and we all just close the door on this chapter and move on. Or he could do kind of poorly, the loan concludes, and then we have to figure what else to do with him in 2027. But that’s a problem for the next offseason.
Like everyone else, I’m wishing him luck. And I’m hoping for an American goalkeeper to take his spot on the roster, so that we can use that international slot somewhere besides backup goalkeeper. I’ve put forth the idea of reaching out to Luis Barraza again, since he hasn’t signed anywhere else yet. But he may not want to return.
Eh, I don’t think there were necessarily any hard feelings between him and the team. If he doesn’t get signed anywhere else and we make him an offer, he seems like a decent guy to be around at the very least. Did he get that knee checked out? I’d imagine if he got any work done and is still rehabbing, both parties would wait until he can pass a physical. There are probably a bunch of other journeyman goalies we could be looking at in the meantime.
Agreed. I don’t think he really got the best shot while he was here, and I do hope that he gets his confidence back. Would love to see him do well and come back. But yeah, in the meantime, we certainly need a number 2. Barraza and David Bingham are probably two of the better backups still on the market.
I don’t think Kim is coming back. It would be better for him anyway to grow in Korea before he tries overseas again.
Roster update following the Kim Joon Hong loan:
We’re currently at 26/30 total spots filled, with 15/20 senior spots and 11/10 supplemental spots filled (assuming Segal is supplemental). 6/8 international spots are accounted for, with 2 DPs and 2 U22s. As noted before, I think DC also has somewhere in the ballpark of $3.6-4M GAM.
5 open senior roster spots, 2 international spots, and either 1 DP/1 U22 or 2 U22 spots is a LOT to work with, all things considered. Brooks Lennon probably takes one of those 5 senior spots, but 4 is still solid. I think they probably hold off on filling all of them, to give some leeway in the summer window, but we certainly still have room for a couple more impact signings depending on what they want to do.
I’m not sure if there’s any goalkeepers in the academy that could be close to signing, and we’d elevate Jordan Farr to our #2. I’d imagine we’re going to get some MLS vet instead.
I also would love to have a backup left back, and I truly wouldn’t mind Derek Dodson coming back as cheap depth. But I have to say I love the swing they’re taking with Brooks Lennon.
Releasing Dodson was a head scratcher to me. He was cheap, reliable depth at a position that is harder to come by. Lennon is certainly better, but he’ll also be more expensive and will probably want to be played more as well.
There’s a certain level of talent that isn’t even a stop gap, and to me, that was Dodson.
Strangely one of the more effective headers on set pieces that I wish our better defenders were, but he was such a weak link in the tighter games he featured in that I’d rather just put a more talented non-specialist there for a game.
Completely agree with this assessment. No point in having a warm body taking up a roster slot just because we need a backup somewhere. Would rather call up someone from our MLSNP team if needed *cough*
I did not know our GAM numbers were that high.
Its a rough estimate for sure, and we don’t know all of the numbers exactly. I put my calculations, based on a rundown from Matt Doyle and by also combing through all of DC’s press releases from the past year and a half, attached here. From what I’ve seen, the GAM for missing the playoffs might be like $200k, so by my calculations that pushes us to around $3.97M on the high end.
Its officially Miller Time in Charlotte: Tyler Miller signs with Charlotte from Bolton Wanderers
Probably will only see time in the USOC, but boy do I miss seeing his goal kicks. Even if the sweeper keeper stuff bit him in the arse one too many times.
DC announced that they have officially signed #1 draft pick Nikola Markovic to a contract. Contract is through 28/29 with options for the 29/30 and 30/31 seasons.
They’ve now also announced the signing of Richie Aman. Contract through June 2027, options for 27/28, 28/29, and 29/30
My bet is that Aman actually sees the field in MLS before Markovic. He might actually be the best chance creator in our midfield right now.