The Dom Dwyer buyout transaction was a fun MLS moment. Here's another one: Charlotte sold Australian midfielder Riley McGree to Middlesbrough for a $4m base fee that could rise to $6m based on incentives. Charlotte FC, of course, are an expansion team that has never actually played a game to this point. However, they signed McGree last year and loaned him out to Birmingham City for this fall, where he apparently did quite well and had a variety of suitors including Celtic, and now they've decided to sell him. They bought him from Adelaide United for less than $600,000.
Birmingham really wanted to sign him permanently, Charlotte wanted to keep him, but McGree didn't want to be there so they sold,
according to their sporting director:
“From day one, myself and the rest of the leadership of this club have been saying that we want players who want to be here,” Krneta said. “We want hungry players who want to be here, who want to be a part of this incredible journey that we’re starting. Riley McGree has become a better player and then decided that he doesn’t really want to come back to us unless he has to. And that wasn’t good enough for us. We didn’t like that. We didn’t like the player who is coming because we are persuading him to come. We want the player to really come here and play for this club and be part of this history. And the moment it was clear that he had doubts, I started looking into options.”
The Rusnak news is official. He's a DP, and they are buying down João Paulo's contract. João Paulo, Roldan, Rusnak, Lodeiro, Atencio. The Sounders have quite the midfield crew.
Austin FC signed Jhojan Valencia, a 25 year old midfielder, from Deportivo Cali.
Inter Miami signed an extremely obscure dual national from abroad, Christopher McVey, a 24 year old Swedish/American CB/RB. He's played for Elfsborg in the Allsvenskan.
SKC signed 21 year old Belgian left back Logan Ndenbe from Guingamp in Ligue 2. He'll compete with Ben Sweat at LB, and given they paid $1.5m for this guy, I assume they expect he'll win that battle. SKC also signed former Rapids CB Kortne Ford. I hope this guy does well — he hasn't played in MLS for three years due to injuries, but looked like a solid pro.
Orlando City re-signed Alexandre Pato, who was injured almost all of last year and will probably get injured again this year... They still need another signing to replace Daryl Dike.
