Josef Martinez has signed a five-year contract extension with Atlanta. That's big news for them. Still no resolution to the Almiron sale saga. It feels like they aren't going to get the $30m that they want and now that Pity Martinez is very obviously about to be unveiled, any foreign club who is paying attention knows that Atlanta *has* to get rid of one of their DPs. If they didn't have the leverage before to get $30m, it's unlikely they'll find it now.
Houston picked up Marlon Hairston from Colorado. Hairston is a useful depth piece at RB and RW. It's always felt to me that Hairston was capable of providing some real quality at RB, but he's never quite put it together and now he's 24. In Colorado, he's already been replaced with Keegan Rosenberry. In Houston, he'll compete with Chris Duvall and maybe AJ DeLaGarza.
Meanwhile, the Rapids signed a couple of academy players: Sam Raben, a CB, and Matt Hundley, a forward/winger out of UCLA. Raben is a college senior, while Hundley was only a freshman and is viewed as the stronger prospect. I'm working on a project identifying the metro area of origin for all American-developed players and Denver is #1 in per-capita player production on the men's side. They are good on the women's side, too.
Atlanta signed 19 year old English/Portuguese winger Dion Pereira. He's only made two appearances for Watford, so he's an unknown.
Seattle signed 19 year old GK Trey Muse to a homegrown contract. Muse is originally from Louisville, but was recruited to the Sounders academy and has since played two years at Indiana. He's pretty good from what I hear, and I expect he'll get heavy usage in the USL, as well as be part of the U20 World Cup team.
Orlando signed 23 year old Brazilian RB Ruan. He has a tepid track record mostly in Serie B of Brazil. The released pointedly mentioned that he signed a one-year deal, which I guess shows how much Orlando is invested in him. The main alternatives at RB are journeyman R.J. Allen and Kyle Smith, a former DIII soccer player who came through the USL and played under current Orlando manager James O'Connor at Louisville City. Seems like a wide-open competition.
Chicago picked up the rights to 23 year old winger/forward Amando Moreno, who is a NYRB academy product who has had two stints at the club that sandwiched a spell at Tijuana. He's never had a real sustained period of success, but Chicago is basically the US Soccer equivalent of a Quadruple-A club, so that might be a good fit for him.
Some re-signings:
- Ema Boateng & Rolf Feltscher at LA Galaxy
- Tsubasa Endoh & Jordan Hamilton at TFC
- Walker Zimmerman at LAFC — this is the big one, as Zimmerman was rumored to be looking abroad.
- LAFC also announced that Danilo Silva and Dejan Jakovic had re-signed. So after some serious questions about their CB corps, they ended up re-signing their top three CBs from the end of last season. They need someone else, too; Jakovic isn't the sort of player who should be getting 1000+ minutes as a 3rd CB at this point in his career.
He's a mediocrity. Hopefully for the Timbers' sake they aren't paying him as much as the Revs were. There has been a league-wide epidemic of expensive and bad foreign CB signings, but the Dielna/Mancienne combo in New England was...special.