Your Wednesday Kickoff

• 2024 Expansion Draft: Major League Soccer has released the list of players eligible for selection by San Diego FC in the 2024 MLS Expansion Draft. The draft is tonight at 10:30 pm ET and free to watch on SanDiegoFC.com.

• Concacaf Champions Cup draw: The 2025 Concacaf Champions Cup field is set after Tuesday's draw. Eight of the 10 MLS clubs who qualified for the 27-team tournament learned their Round One opponents, while Columbus Crew and LA Galaxy each received a bye to the Round of 16. Take a look at the full draw here.

• Inter Miami transfer Gómez to Brighton & Hove Albion: Inter Miami CF have transferred midfielder Diego Gómez to English Premier League side Brighton & Hove Albion. The 21-year-old Paraguayan international departs for a club-record fee (reportedly $15 million with add-ons) that ranks among the most expensive outbound transfers in MLS history.

• LA Galaxy announce end-of-year moves: Fresh off their record sixth MLS Cup title, LA are talking with Maya Yoshida about a new deal. Yoshida captained LA in 2024, forming a center-back partnership with Emiro Garcés. Also, the Galaxy exercised their 2025 contract options for homegrown center back Jalen Neal and midfielder Mark Delgado. And they moved on from veteran Uruguayan defender Martín Cáceres. Take a look at the full list of moves here.

• Colorado Rapids acquire SuperDraft selections from Philadelphia Union: Colorado have received Philadelphia's SuperDraft selections for the next three years (eight total) in exchange for up to $600,000 in General Allocation Money (GAM). MLS!

San Diego FC will introduce themselves to the MLS world tonight by… uh …effectively stealing a player from five different teams. Now, most of the league’s best contracts and players are protected from tonight’s draft, but there’s always a chance San Diego strike gold. Or, even better, take a player off the board just to hold him hostage until they work out a trade with his old team. 

THE BEST EXPANSION DRAFT PICKS

To get an idea of what kind of gold they could be striking, here’s our shot at selecting the best MLS Expansion Picks since Orlando City and New York City FC made their debut. 

I’ll be honest: after looking through the last decade of drafts, great finds have been few and far between. If I were in charge tonight, I’d pick the five best players available and trade them back to their own teams for GAM, but I’m built differently. But as the league gets bigger and better, so does the list of draft-eligible players. Maybe San Diego can break an unencouraging trend. 

Tommy McNamara - New York City FC, 2014

Yep. He’s got to be up here as one of the rare expansion picks who actually played significant minutes for his team over multiple seasons. McNamara played 5,500 minutes for NYCFC from 2015 to 2018 and put together a five-goal, nine-assist season in 2016. 

Latif Blessing - LAFC, 2017

Blessing might be the best expansion pick of the last decade? Ever? He made 106 starts for LAFC from 2018 to 2022, including 29 starts and 34 appearances for the league’s best-ever regular season team, 2019 LAFC. He scored a career-high six goals that season and delivered a career-high six assists as a key contributor in midfield. 

Brandon Vazquez - Nashville SC, 2019

Ok, this wasn’t actually a good pick, but seriously, the list of very good picks is really small and this is one of my favorite “What Ifs?” of the last few years in MLS. Nashville picked Vazquez and immediately traded him to FC Cincinnati for $150k in GAM. If Vazquez doesn’t go to Cincinnati, does he still become a star? Do Cincy get their life together? Do Nashville win a trophy with an elite defense and an attack led by Hany Mukhtar and Vazquez? 

Nicholas Gioacchini - St. Louis CITY SC - 2022

He didn’t hang around long (again, small list) but he did play 2,103 minutes in St. Louis’ inaugural season. Gioacchini scored 10 times that year as he helped lead St. Louis to the top spot in the Western Conference. 

Ten MLS teams will compete in Concacaf Champions Cup in 2025. Yesterday, they found out their first opponents. Well, most of them. Columbus and the Galaxy both have Round One byes. The draw shaped out like this: 

• FC Cincinnati vs. FC Motagua
• Inter Miami CF vs. Sporting Kansas City
• LAFC vs. Colorado Rapids
• Real Salt Lake vs. CS Herediano
• Seattle Sounders FC vs. Antigua GFC
• Vancouver Whitecaps FC vs. Deportivo Saprissa
• Columbus Crew vs. winner of LAFC vs. Colorado Rapids
• LA Galaxy vs. winner of Real Salt Lake vs. CS Herediano

We can go ahead and say a couple of things. Sporting KC and Colorado got the toughest Round One draws. We can also go ahead and say that one of these MLS teams will absolutely crash and burn against one of the non-MLS/Liga MX sides and it will be very funny. Those teams are too good for one of these teams not to slip up. [Stares at RSL and Vancouver.]

Anyway, looking at the bracket as a whole, LAFC, Columbus and Inter Miami all somehow ended up in the same section. So did the Galaxy and FC Cincinnati. That’s… kind of a nightmare for MLS’s chances, to be 100% honest. Of the five teams that should have the firepower to make it to the end of the tournament — Columbus, LAFC, Miami, LA, FC Cincinnati — at least three will get killed off before they can reach the semifinal. 

It’s a tough draw for MLS. And an especially brutal draw for Seattle, who ended up in the same section as Club America, Chivas and Cruz Azul. Meanwhile, the other remaining section of the bracket seems tailor-made for CF Monterrey to cruise to a semifinal. This is going to be an uphill battle for the league… even more than normal. 

Tiki-taka

• Diego Gómez is off to Brighton. He should do well there. It’s not clear how well Inter Miami will do without him. There’s a chance we’re looking back this time next year wondering why Miami couldn’t put together an MLS Cup run again and a key reason may just be losing Gómez. They’re going to have a tough time finding a replacement of his quality in a U22 spot. 

• The Union did an extremely Union thing by trading away all of their SuperDraft picks for the next three years. As always, the reminder is that if you build your academy to produce the league’s best prospects year after year, you don’t really need to worry about things like the SuperDraft. And if you don’t have that kind of academy, there’s still plenty of good to try and find in the SuperDraft. This should work out just fine for Philly and Colorado.

Nashville SC sign Bauer to contract extension: Nashville SC have signed defender Josh Bauer to a contract extension through the 2026 season with an option for 2027. Bauer has spent the last three seasons in Nashville, making 36 MLS appearances. This season, he played in a career-high 26 matches, including 19 starts.

LAFC sign homegrown midfielder Terry: LAFC have signed homegrown midfielder Jude Terry through 2027 with options for 2028-29. The 16-year-old US youth international originally joined the LAFC Academy as a 12-year-old in 2021 from Legends FC.

New York Red Bulls sign homegrown midfielder Mehmeti: The New York Red Bulls have signed homegrown midfielder Adri Mehmeti through 2028 with an option for 2029. The 15-year-old US youth international joins after playing for MLS NEXT Pro affiliate New York Red Bulls II.

• Joe Lowery took a look at who San Diego FC should pick in the 2024 MLS Expansion Draft.

Good luck out there. Make the reboot even better than the original.