It’s in the title, folks. Every week during the MLS season, Backheeled is here to dive into the biggest Winners and Losers from around the league. Let’s get right to it.
Winner: Designated Player debutants
It’s been a busy week for Timo Werner.
The Earthquakes’ newest Designated Player was sitting in a Berlin embassy on Tuesday, flew across an ocean on Wednesday, had his first two training sessions in San Jose on Thursday and Friday, and made his MLS debut for the final 30 minutes of a 2-0 home win over Atlanta United on Saturday. Look, I’m exhausted just thinking about that schedule. Werner lived it — and helped seal the deal for San Jose against the Five Stripes with a textbook assist.
This is the former RB Leipzig forward’s game in a nutshell: race in behind, create a few inches of separation, and either hit a shot towards goal or, in this case, play the final ball:
Timo Werner INSTANT IMPACT!
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) March 1, 2026
The German dishes out an assist on his MLS debut. 😱 pic.twitter.com/DF7QjIUZau
“He took off,” Bruce Arena said of Werner on the play above. Yeah, I’d say so.
Initially playing as the striker in Arena’s 4-2-3-1 before swapping to the left wing to close out the game, Werner’s athleticism didn’t look hampered by his upcoming 30th birthday or his sheer lack of game-time over the last three years of a soured European journey. It’s that lack of match action with less than 2,000 minutes played since the end of the 2022-23 season that made the German something of a mystery box offseason signing by San Jose. But the early returns are positive, to say the least.
