DC United: What Erkut Sogut brings to the nation's capital | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

First things first: D.C. United’s ownership are quite aware they’ve stepped well outside the box in their choice of the chief soccer officer who will succeed departing general manager and CSO Ally Mackay.

Dr. Erkut Sogut has never worked at a club before, nor has he worked in Major League Soccer. And it will raise a few more eyebrows that the sports lawyer and former agent was initially contacted to assist the Black-and-Red with their search process, having just helped them find new head coach René Weiler, only to wind up as the outcome of said search.

But United’s co-chairmen Steve Kaplan and Jason Levien are convinced he’s the best brain for the substantial job of rebuilding a proud side laid low by years of underperformance.

"Sometimes the best opportunity is staring right at you and you don't see it," Kaplan explained in a wide-ranging conversation with MLSsoccer.com on Friday. “Jason and I, it's almost like we had the same the idea at the same time.

"It's like, this is maybe the smartest guy in football we've been around, and hardest-working. Would he consider it? Would it be possible? And that's how the discussion started."

Road less traveled

And he’s hardly new to the game. Though best known for his representation of retired German star Mesut Özil, in particular the record-breaking transfer deal that took the playmaker from Real Madrid to Arsenal in 2013, Sogut is something of a soccer renaissance man, walking a unique path that’s taken him from Hanover, Germany to London to India to Istanbul, across the Atlantic to Southern California and now the United States’ capital city.

He’s even a prolific author, having written an introduction to his former trade called “How to Become a Football Agent: The Guide” and a trio of fiction novels set in a murky underworld behind elite soccer.

“I've been working in football since 2001, so I started very early. As a law student, I already was working in agencies, on contracts. That's how I actually got into it,” explained Sogut, whose official title is managing director of soccer operations. “Since then, I've been a sports agent, I've been a sports lawyer, been an adjunct professor, teaching for many years. So I'm in a football world, and have a lot of experience from different countries which I bring in.

“And now three years in the United States, in Orange County, where I live, I have also seen a lot now, what contracts, how things works here, represented players,” he added, estimating he’s already visited about 80 percent of MLS’s member clubs in prior engagements. “So I learned also everything within this league and as a lawyer, I like regulations as well. I like reading – even though there's so many, I'm sometimes surprised how many regulations there are – but it's nice. So I think I bring this experience from different angles.”

Strong ties

He’s got “a longstanding relationship” with Levien and Kaplan, too. They hosted him at Audi Field in the stadium’s early years, his first MLS experience a D.C. match featuring the bygone ‘LuchoRoo’ pairing of Lucho Acosta and Wayne Rooney. Sogut was involved in conversations with Özil and his camp about siting one of his 39 Steps coffeeshops in the venue, and toured United’s training facility, the Inova Performance Complex, before it even opened.

“Once we got to know Erkut and the way he thinks about the world, he thinks about the sport, we wanted to do things with him,” said Levien. “Whether it was soccer or coffee, we just could tell he's so driven, he's so passionate. He's got some great ideas.

“When we started thinking about what we wanted to do on the general manager or the sporting director side, we leaned on Erkut again. And as we talked through the candidates and what we really wanted in the qualities, we realized they were an Erkut. Number one, the strong partnership with René about how to build a squad. Number two, the international relationships, the track record of recruiting top talent, evaluating that talent, and bringing them in and getting their trust, is something he has in spades.”

He and Weiler are already getting up to speed on the particular intricacies of MLS and its rules and plan to build a team that can help them gain full fluency in that respect. D.C.’s leadership also see a growing cosmopolitanism to the league they believe will add further value to Sogut’s skill set and contacts network.

“I think MLS is becoming more international,” said Kaplan. “There's more international interest in MLS, though it's always been an international league. To compete at the highest level, we have to be considering players from all over the world. So it's a key component of what we have to do and where we have to go.”

Rebuild across the nation's capital

Beyond improving a squad that’s languished in the Eastern Conference basement for most of 2025 and all too much of the past several years overall, United are also in the midst of an ongoing effort to found an MLS NEXT Pro side with its own facilities 45 minutes north of D.C. in Baltimore. The Black-and-Red plan to partner with an existing team in that league in the meantime to help their top academy prospects develop, though they also retain an alliance with nearby Loudoun United in the USL Championship.

Sogut will have a part to play in all that, as well as the labor of restoring belief among long-suffering fans, some of whom shared their frustrations with Levien in recent town hall-style gatherings.

“I'm excited for them to meet Erkut and for them to hear his vision,” said Levien, who added United “are planning to invest” this winter on high-grade reinforcements at the Designated Player and/or U22 Initiative tiers. “He's going to be a real leader for us in turning this around and building the roster and building our culture. So the next step in those meetings is to bring Erkut and have him face-to-face with the key supporter groups, the key season ticket holders, to understand the vision.

“We've got work to do to win back trust, because the results haven't been there. They've been deeply disappointing and frustrating. And so that work is going to begin.”