MLS doesn’t have enough winners and losers — and that’s by design.
The league’s constraining roster rules and regulations have been purpose-built to keep a tight gap between the best and worst teams. Toss in the fact that 60% of the league makes the playoffs and you’ve got a real “everybody gets a trophy” situation on your hands. We need more winners in MLS. We need more losers, too. Those things build the kinds of stories that make any product more compelling.
To that end: today, I’m making my own winners and losers by ranking MLS teams based on their summer business.
With the secondary transfer window officially closed, teams have made most of the rest of their big additions for the year. Now, we could still see some players moving from MLS to other countries with many other transfer windows around the world not closing until the end of August or very start of September. We could also see teams pick up a few free agents. Still, we have plenty of information to put together a quality list.
The winners? They’re primed and ready for a late-season push. The losers? Maybe not so much.
Let’s get to the transfer rankings, working from worst to first.
*Deal not yet announced as of publication.
30. DC United
Notable incomings: Caden Clark
Notable outgoings: N/A
Rene Weiler coached one match for DC, saw Caden Clark playing for the other team, and just had to sign him. Clark is a decent enough complementary piece, but it feels like DC heavily overpaid for him at $700,000 in cold, hard cash. Even if he hits, this roster is in awful shape.
