The offer went to Real Salt Lake this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
The offer went to Chicago Fire this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $261.6K — a club that wants Osvald Søe enough to be asked twice.
The offer went to San Diego Football Club this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
The name of Juan José Mina has come up in conversations New York Red Bulls were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jorge Ruvalcaba is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
$3.0M was the most the club would pay and FC Dallas were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Sporting Kansas City have gone to New York Red Bulls with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
There comes a point where a club either backs its own ambition or admits it does not have any. Sporting Kansas City have paid $900.0K for Taha Habroune, which is the loudest way there is of saying which one it chose.
John Pulskamp and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Máximo Carrizo is 18, and Sporting Kansas City have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Sporting Kansas City has been clear about where Jake Davis stands, which is more than many ever get.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Sporting Kansas City will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
New York Red Bulls asked and Minnesota United FC said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
New York Red Bulls have gone to Columbus Crew with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Ethan Horvath and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
The name of Andy Rojas has come up in conversations New York Red Bulls were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
A month in which every rumour is possible and most of them are nonsense. The manager has a list, the board has a number, and neither is telling the other the whole of it.
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at New York Red Bulls would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. New York Red Bulls will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
69 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. New York Red Bulls lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
At 21 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason New York Red Bulls will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
85 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. New York Red Bulls lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Jorge Ruvalcaba was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; New York Red Bulls are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Ethan Horvath and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
At 20 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 11 actions, 6.66, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Dylan Nealis has his answer from New York Red Bulls; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Owen Steffen after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
In brief
The dugoutJohn McCarthy knocks on the manager’s door