At long last, the Primary Transfer Window is closed! That means MLS teams are done adding new pieces until the Secondary Transfer Window opens on July 24. There are a couple of exceptions to that:
- MLS teams can still sign players, either on a temporary or permanent basis, from within their own pipeline (kids already in the academy or under contract with the MLS NEXT Pro team).
- Any player who was already out of contract when the window closed on Wednesday can be signed at any point.
Those are obviously not the big swings, though. The big swings have already been taken, or the pieces have been arranged in a way for further big swings to be taken during the summer. So what you see now is more or less the group your team will battle with for the next 15-ish games.
What we’ve got below are some grades with an overview. If you want a comprehensive list of transactions, here you go:
Bookmark that page. It’s very useful.
In we go:
Emmanuel Latte Lath has been very good – maybe not league record-signing good, but still.
Miguel Almirón has mostly been anonymous and has negative chemistry with holdover Alexey Miranchuk. The Mateusz Klich move makes sense – any team in the league would’ve taken him on a $300k salary hit – but he doesn’t add what they need in midfield (and so far, neither has anyone else).
I also think it’s pretty clear they needed to add at least one starting-caliber center back. Honestly… maybe two. Maybe that’s why they traded winger Xande Silva at the deadline.
Best move: The Latte Lath signing. He’s going to be very good for a long time.
Wilfried Zaha hasn’t exactly taken the league by storm, but he clearly fits the game model and has gas in the tank. Over the course of this season and potentially next, he makes this team better.
Their best work, though, was bringing Pep Biel back on a non-DP loan through July, which kept a DP slot open for a big potential move. Turns out Biel is now playing so well that the move is probably just keeping him around, but it’s good Charlotte have the flexibility (and three more months of data ahead) to see.
Adding Souleyman Doumbia, who gives them a very different tactical look at left back, was good stuff.
Best move: Getting Biel back while keeping that DP slot open (for now).
Jonathan Bamba hasn’t found his goalscoring boots yet, but he’s been electric. He and fellow winger Philip Zinckernagel, another winter arrival, have been a huge part of Chicago looking like an Audi MLS Cup Playoffs team for the first time since I was a very young child (and a huge part of Hugo Cuypers starting to justify the eight-figure outlay from ahead of the 2024 season).
The backline isn’t entirely fixed, but Jack Elliott’s been as advertised, while a bunch of the new kids – especially in midfield – have developed quickly into valuable players.
About the only box they didn’t check this winter was failing to add an MVP-caliber player. But guess what? Like Charlotte, they kept a DP slot open to use this summer, and boy would Kevin De Bruyne be a nice fit.
Just a really impressive first window from new head coach/CSO Gregg Berhalter.
Best move: My nature is to put Elliott here because I’m just like that, but Bamba’s the type of playmaking winger who makes everyone better, and they got him on a bargain at reportedly $3.5 million. What a steal.
Kévin Denkey and Evander have both been very good thus far, and you’re going to win a lot of games when you hit on your two DPs. Even some that you maybe haven’t deserved to.
When you hit on your backup center backs, and you upgrade your d-mid depth, and you upgrade at wingback as well… man there’s a lot to like here. I just wish they’d found a way to use one of their open U22 slots to bring in a Pavel Bucha understudy (I know I’ve written that a thousand times already in 2025, I’m sorry).
Best move: Denkey is so much more than just a goal-scorer. It would not shock me if he wins a Landon Donovan MLS MVP award at some point in the future – he seems to have that kind of all-around talent.
It is such a flex to sell Cucho Hernández and trade Christian RamÃrez, and then wait months before deciding to replace just one of them. It’s the kind of thing you can do when your head coach is the best this league’s ever seen at maximizing talent out of previously under-utilized attacking players.
I think the Dániel Gazdag move will work perfectly, even though he’ll have nightmares about this past weekend’s outing. And Aliyu Ibrahim is the exact type of talent that Wilfried Nancy has molded in the past.
But I still wish they’d done more to reinforce that attack.
Best move: Could they have gotten more for Cucho by selling him elsewhere? Maybe. But man, I love that they did right by the player in selling him to Real Betis, a move that gives him the best shot at making Colombia’s roster for next year’s World Cup.
We all know that sports is a business. It’s nice when it turns out teams respect the human element as well. I hope the Crew get paid back in karma (and that my B- grade above eventually looks dumb as hell).
They cleared out a DP (Klich) without opening a DP slot, signed a bunch of attackers without addressing the need for chance creation, and added a bunch of defenders without really appearing to upgrade the defense.
Last summer’s big signing, Boris Enow, has lost his starting job. This winter’s big signing, U22 goalkeeper Kim Joon-Hong, has also lost his starting job. There seems to be a disconnect.
Best move: I love the Fidel Barajas acquisition and hope he gets on the field for more than the occasional five-minute cameo soon, because he might solve part of the chance-creation issues. And look, if he’s on the right wing, and newly returned Kristian Fletcher is on the left wing, with Christian Benteke in the middle, that trio causes danger.
They did really well getting Fafà Picault in free agency, got a bunch of young, high-upside guys from South America on loan and on the relative cheap, and addressed their biggest need (center back) by bringing in Maxi Falcón.
Miami have the deepest roster I’ve ever seen in MLS even after trading Robert Taylor and reportedly moving on from Julian Gressel this week. The since-departed Chris Henderson deserves a ton of credit for that, obviously. But just as obviously, whoever’s making the decisions over the past six months has been smart about leveraging Miami’s position as a destination, as well as using the lure of playing alongside the GOAT to add pieces other teams just don’t have access to.
Add in the fact that Javier Mascherano is just as confident playing the homegrowns as Tata Martino was, and this whole thing looks sustainable.
Best move: I straight-up think Telasco Segovia is better than Diego Gómez.
They’re going to do their thing, trying to find and maximize cast-offs while developing their own academy kids and, to a lesser extent, SuperDraft picks.
Say what you will about the tenets of this approach, but at least it's an ethos. But if you don't develop guys like you’d want, or the game model changes, or you sell one too many load-bearing pieces, or you’re hit with injuries, then the bottom can drop out quickly.
As indeed has happened for Montréal early this year.
Best move: It might not work out, but the theory behind taking a flier on Giacomo Vrioni during the last year of his DP deal – with the Revs picking up part of the tab – was good. Part of Montréal’s plan has to be finding DPs from around the league that aren’t working out and getting them in on a cut-rate, exactly as they did here.
Alexey Miranchuk in the summer, maybe?
They used this winter to try and adjust the tactical blueprint away from absorb-and-counter into something much, much more free-flowing and ball-dominant. There have been some bumps in the road, of course, but it’s mostly worked. B.J. Callaghan has done a very good job.
So, too, did general manager Mike Jacobs this winter. He brought in a couple of midfield table-setters who could both keep the ball and move it to high-value spots, while also adding a couple of dynamic wide players (one fullback, one midfielder).
They did not, however, add another goalscorer. Which they badly need.
Best move: I really like what I’ve seen from Edvard Tagseth thus far. Can’t believe they got him on a free.
Nobody outside of San Diego had a busier winter than the Revs, who’ve torn down damn near the whole thing over the past couple of windows. Only two starters remain from this time last year, with three newcomers added over the course of last season, and six – six!! – added this winter.
That is so much work, and while I will continue to have my doubts, there’s no denying this team appears to have hit on something over the past couple of weeks with the shift to a 3-4-1-2.
Best move: They had so much flexibility in part because they sold Esmir Bajraktarević to PSV Eindhoven for reportedly up to $6 million, which… I mean, that’s pretty incredible to me. I still don’t really get it.
But $3 million of that converts to GAM, and when you have that much GAM, you can do a lot of roster surgery.
On the flip side, if you told me 18 months ago that the Revs were only going to get $600k and add-ons for Noel Buck, I’d have laughed in your face.
Win some, lose some.
There were a lot of raised eyebrows at the addition of veteran Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting on a DP deal, and so far those eyebrows have mostly stayed raised. He’s made his PKs and poached a couple of goals, but he’s mostly a stationary, non-dynamic presence in and around the area, and he’s not adding much against the ball, either.
We haven’t seen much of Wiktor Bogacz yet. Maybe someday we’ll look back on this winter as the one in which the Red Bulls finally found their BWP replacement. But today’s not that day.
Best move: Getting $800k GAM for Andrés Reyes was a job very well done.
NYCFC’s big move was bringing Pascal Jansen in as head coach to be something of a U22 whisperer. So far… not great.
I understand the decision to stand pat, given Jansen’s reputation and past success in youth development. And look, some of that is there to see – Jonathan Shore’s been really good, Nico Cavallo looks like a steal, and a few other academy kids have gotten onto the field.
But it looks like the front office might have missed on Julián Fernández and AgustÃn Ojeda, and if that’s the case, then they missed when they didn’t do anything to replace those guys this winter.
Anyway, with James Sands loaned out and then injured, and Shore really more of an 8 than a 6, they needed to get a d-mid. Australian international Aiden O’Neill is reportedly on the way from Standard Liege, and that should help.
Best move: Getting reportedly $17 million for Santiago RodrÃguez? That’s incredible work, even if it hasn’t amounted to much in terms of improving the team.
I frankly think they upgraded when they brought in Marco Pašalić to replace Facu Torres. They also did very good work in adding central midfield depth – Joran Gerbet and Colin Guske – via the SuperDraft and from MLS NEXT Pro, respectively. This is a front office that kicks over stones and finds value, and front offices committed to doing that tend to build teams that make the playoffs every year.
Which the Lions do.
My one knock is that they didn’t add a big, new center-back signing. But Oscar Pareja’s making due anyway, isn’t he?
Best move: Getting reportedly up to $14 million for Torres was brilliant, but Eduard Atuesta for free? That makes me weep tears of joy on behalf of Cats fans.
A huge part of me really admires sporting director Ernst Tanner’s approach to roster building, and his unshakeable belief that 1) the talent they’re producing from within, and 2) the talent he finds on the cheap from overlooked or under-scouted places will be enough to propel this team to title contention. And look, the Union have been playing very good ball so far in 2025.
But it’s tough to argue that this group’s in a better position to actually win silverware than they were last year, or the year before that, or the year before that, etc. etc. etc.
Best move: I don’t think Jack McGlynn was ever really going to fit this game model, so getting up to $3.4 million and a sell-on fee from a team where he’s playing every single minute in a featured role was really shrewdly done. It’s money in the bank, sends all the right signals to the next crop of homegrowns (i.e., we will find the right fit for you even if it’s not with us), and opens up playing time for guys who fit.
The Reds appear to be in a holding pattern, with Lorenzo Insigne’s deal looming before they can do anything substantial. So yes, I’m grading them on a curve.
And so I think they did a little bit better than I expected, bringing in several useful-looking players on loan, and promoting a few others from the academy (please let that pipeline be opened). It’s not much, but it was a step forward.
Best move: Offloading Prince Owusu got TFC a handful of GAM, opening up senior and international roster slots.
