MLS Cup is done and dusted. Winter chill has descended on most of North America. And the silly season has arrived in MLS.
It’s the time of year when hope springs anew among even the most hardboiled supporters of the most woebegone teams, and fans glue themselves to the social-media feeds of league insider and MLSsoccer.com alum Tom Bogert in search of the latest updates on transfers, trades and other scuttlebutt.
With 30 clubs and somewhere around 1,000 players and counting in the mix, it can be overwhelming to keep up with the Transfer Tracker. So we’re here to boil it down for you on a week-to-week basis.
Welcome back to the transfer roundup. We’ll start the first edition of the 2025/26 offseason along the muddy banks of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C.
D.C. United officially unveiled Tai Baribo as their newest Designated Player on Wednesday, and club leaders did not mince words about just how significant they believe he will be in the effort to revitalize a proud organization lost in the wilderness for the better part of a decade.
Baribo is “probably one of the biggest signings for the club in history,” said United’s new managing director of soccer operations Erkut Sogut – which is saying something for a side who’ve had the likes of Wayne Rooney, Christian Benteke, Marco Etcheverry and Eddie Pope don their colors over the decades.
Then again, it made some sense, with the Black-and-Red having already announced they’d invested over $15 million total in this transaction, between the Israel international’s five-year contract and the $4 million-plus they sent to Philadelphia for the Union’s top scorer in 2025.
“My hat's off to Erkut and the team he's assembled, not only to identify Tai, but to recruit him and help persuade him to be a big part of this project – the centerpiece of this project,” said United’s co-chairman and CEO Jason Levien. “It's really a watershed moment for D.C. United, bringing in a player who's a Supporters’ Shield winner, the leading scorer on the Supporters’ Shield winners … We're getting a player at the height of his powers, in the middle of his career, and we believe he can do even more for us.”
It’s the first big step in Sogut’s plan to build a younger, hungrier roster for coach René Weiler and the “high-pressing and transitional attacking football” they aim to produce in 2026. Cognizant of the need to provide Baribo with quality service, they plan to sign another DP this winter, too – one who could cost even more than he did.
Can last season’s Wooden Spoon recipients reinvent themselves?
The champagne and beer spills from their MLS Cup 2025-winning celebrations at Chase Stadium had barely dried before the new champions set about making a new batch of headlines this month. Namely:
- Inter Miami fully acquire Rodrigo De Paul from Atlético Madrid
- Inter Miami sign ex-Tottenham, Real Madrid defender Sergio Reguilón
- Inter Miami re-sign striker Luis Suárez
- Dayne St. Clair, MLS Goalkeeper of the Year, heading to Inter Miami
That last one’s not a done deal quite yet. But you get the picture: IMCF are not standing pat as they look to extend this year’s success into the future. Lionel Messi & Co. have a Concacaf Champions Cup trophy to go chase again – starting in a matter of weeks, actually – and recent MLS history shows just how difficult it is to defend a title, any title, in this league.
Can the first back-to-back Landon Donovan MLS MVP in league history make his Herons the first back-to-back champs in over a decade? As we documented before their dramatic final win over Vancouver, they’ve already been relentlessly pursuing perfection for two-plus years to reach this point.
A new young coach with a familiar face is bringing in a host of new names (and an old one or two as well, to be fair) in pursuit of a new vision for a member of MLS’s old guard.
Did you follow all that? Bear with us.
When Red Bull New York – and yeah, the club officially has a slightly new moniker going forward – hired certified league legend Michael Bradley as their head coach, it fit into a wider plan to evolve beyond their familiar full-throttle pressing towards a more possession-oriented game model with “more flavor,” “more style,” “more creativity,” in the words of new head of sport Julian de Guzman.
Several players have already arrived or departed, most notably the acquisition of talented young Americans Cade Cowell and Justin Che, and more such transactions are reportedly in process. Come opening day, that old concept of “energy drink soccer” might mean something quite different at RBNY.
Toronto FC’s postseason hopes were already dead and buried when the 2025 campaign’s stretch run got underway, so it sort of flew under the radar that the Reds quietly grew into a much tougher out than their place in the standings might indicate.
Led by high-dollar midseason recruit Djordje Mihailovic, Robin Fraser’s side took points off of half a dozen playoff teams, including Shield-winning Philly and the eventual league champs from Miami, raising hopes of a much brighter ‘26 on the shores of Lake Ontario.
Multiple reports that TFC are close to signing free-agent defender Walker Zimmerman can only elevate that optimism another few notches. A FIFA World Cup veteran, five-time MLS Best XI honoree and two-time MLS Defender of the Year who's won two Supporters' Shields and two US Open Cups across three different clubs, Zimmerman offers just the right sort of profile at the right moment in this project.
Yes, he’s been increasingly sidetracked by injuries in recent years, and maybe lost half a step from his dominating peak. Yet from the penalty box to the locker room, Zimmerman knows what a winning culture looks like, and seems well-positioned to be an on-field avatar for Fraser, himself an elegant center back in his illustrious playing days.
Older MLS heads can regale you with tales of the brash boldness around the Seattle Sounders back in the day: Fun yarns about luring Clint Dempsey back to MLS in sensational, spendy fashion, or their supporters trolling opposing fanbases about how they invented domestic supporter culture. Things are a bit different now, though.
The Rave Green have settled on a more understated model lately, one that eschews splashy big-money signings in favor of a methodical player-development pipeline based around Tacoma Defiance, their MLS NEXT Pro second team, and the canny collection of MLS-proven figures like Albert Rusnák and Jesús Ferreira.
That approach continues with their recent moves. Seattle snared free agent and local kid Hassani Dotson, added defensive depth via Ryan Sailor, re-signed veteran goalkeeper Stefan Frei, selected a couple of SuperDraft prospects with local ties and reportedly are close to keeping Paul Rothrock, another free agent and native son, in their colors via a new contract.
Is it as sexy as the old days? Perhaps not. Yet they remain perennial trophy contenders (Leagues Cup hardware being their latest capture) with a clear philosophical identity, and surprised just about everyone by holding their own in the FIFA Club World Cup’s Group of Death, so who among us can really throw stones?
