Breakout player candidates: Who could emerge in 2026? | OneFootball

By Matthew Doyle

We’re starting to kick our season preview content into gear.

I’m switching up the order a bit, though, as I’m making our Breakout Player predictions a little bit earlier than in years past. And also… I’m not forcing it by picking a breakout player for each team. It just doesn’t happen that way in real life!

Instead, let’s go around the league and identify eight guys who I think are poised to take on a bigger role, up their production and become more than just an under-the-radar fan favorite or a kid with potential. 

These are not guys who burst onto the scene out of nowhere like, say, Zavier Gozo did last year for Real Salt Lake. Rather, think of someone like Sebastian Berhalter, who was a little-known utilityman for Vancouver Whitecaps FC and played his way into the 2025 MLS Best XI and, quite possibly, a 2026 FIFA World Cup roster spot with the United States. 

That’s basically the definition of a Breakout Player. Got it?​

Ok, in we go:

Ted Ku-Dipietro

Midfielder

I went back a couple of years looking for my favorite clips of Ku-DiPietro, who once upon a time was a high-upside D.C. United academy product but who has, for whatever reason, failed to consistently put it all together for the first team either with D.C. or, after being acquired ahead of last season, with the Colorado Rapids.

But man, the flashes he’s shown:

The thing about literally all the clips I can find of him is that he’s almost never lined up at left wing. Even in the above compilation, he was more of a second forward than a winger (though, as pointed out in the commentary, he was spending a lot of time swapping places with the other attackers).

I thought that would have changed last year when the Rapids acquired him for $1.125 million via an intra-league cash-for-player trade. But for whatever reason, now-former head coach Chris Armas went away from the 4-2-3-1 to a 4-4-2, and often played Ku-DiPietro on the right. Neither the formation change nor the position adjustment really suited him.

We’ll see what happens with new head coach Matt Wells. Everything seems to point towards him being a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-3-3 guy, and if that’s the case, then Ku-DiPietro – who’s still just 23 years old – will likely get first crack at left wing.

Taha Habroune

Midfielder

Habroune doesn’t run; he glides. There is an aesthetically appealing aspect to how he plays the game that just makes you want to watch him take space and get all the gears of that beautiful Crew attack – even when they were missing chances left and right, it truly was beautiful – turning together in concert.

He’s played a good amount as an attacking midfielder both for Columbus and for the US U-20s (he was a key reserve for the US team this past autumn as they once again made it to the FIFA U-20 World Cup quarterfinals), but I think he profiles best as a ball-moving No. 8, someone who organizes the game with his vision and ability to instill tempo.

The underlying numbers largely point to that: Habroune was in the 70th percentile among all midfielders in expected assists as per FotMob, which is good, though obviously not game-breaking. But if you look at American Soccer Analysis’s more granular “goals added” data, Haboune ranked in the top 10 among all MLS central and attacking midfielders in the value of the passes he hits. The guys around him on that list are former MVPs, World Cup locks, dudes who got sold mid-season for many millions of dollars, and Mark Delgado (perpetually the most underrated player in MLS).

Habroune’s like that. He makes the game easier for everyone around him, and that’s the most valuable skill in this sport.

Michael Collodi

Goalkeeper

I’ll let two things do the talking here for Collodi.

First is that Maarten Paes is a good goalkeeper, and Collodi simply beat him out for the No. 1 job in Dallas. Managers at every level are always hesitant to bench an established vet for an unproven guy coming through the ranks, but the unproven guy is sometimes making such a compelling case that it can’t be ignored. Eric Quill did what he had to, and Collodi’s now the starter.

Second is that the statistical case is airtight. As per American Soccer Analysis, Collodi was the best goalkeeper in the league – based primarily on his unreal shot-stopping – over the final quarter of last season, and frankly, I can’t say that’s wrong. Meanwhile, FotMob doesn’t have the granular shot-stopping data, but shows that he plays error-free soccer and commands his box:

I might mess around and make him my preseason Goalkeeper of the Year pick.

Justin Haak

Midfielder

Did Haak already break out? You could argue he did, as in 2025 he first made himself an indispensable part of New York City FC’s backline, and then turned himself into one of the most coveted free agents in MLS history. You probably already know this, but he eventually signed with the LA Galaxy and will probably be there for a good, long while.

Haak’s already very much on the radar, but I’m predicting a further breakout. This one will come in the form of a jump from “he’s really good and is now an S-Tier free agent” to “damn, I think maybe he’s a Best XI guy and should we be talking about him sneaking onto the World Cup roster?”

That’s the kind of talent Haak showed over the majority of the second half of last season, one in which he played mainly as a center back for the first time but retained his midfielder-by-trade comfort on the ball. Head coach Greg Vanney will put that to good use, I’m sure, and Haak will have the extra protection of playing next to former MLS Defender of the Year Jakob Glesnes, another offseason acquisition for the Galaxy.

Brooklyn Raines

Midfielder

Raines was a written-in-pen starter and one of the best players on the US team I mentioned that played such great ball en route to the quarterfinals of the 2025 FIFA U 20 World Cup. He did everything a coach could want of his starting d-mid: shield the backline, harass opposing playmakers, press mistakes and get on the ball to help start build-outs.

The coach of that U-20 team? Marko Mitrović, who is now the head coach of the Revs. That is surely a large part of why New England paid $1.6 million via cash trade to the Dynamo for the 20-year-old homegrown.

I am at least a little bit surprised Houston sold, as Raines was a huge part of last year’s team – he started 20 games, and was good in most of them – and seemed like an even bigger part of their future. But while Raines was very good in distribution for the US U-20s, I’m guessing the Houston folks felt like it wasn’t quite clicking for him in their unique setup.

Whatever the case, Mitrović’s already shown he can get a ton out of Raines on both sides of the ball. I’m feeling like they made a good bet here.

Ronald Donkor

Midfielder

The scouting report entering last season for Donkor was short:

The Ghanaian, who recently turned 21, seemed to be in town to do Energy Drink Soccer things and nothing else. There was little reason to think he was anything but a destroyer.

But then the strangest thing happened in July: He got fit, got on the field and started completing one pass after another for Red Bull New York. Now, these weren’t seeing-eye through balls or the like, but they were high-value passes completed with real precision. American Soccer Analysis had his expected pass completion number at 84.2%; he actually completed 88.6%. Of all the starting center mids in MLS, only one had a higher passes-completed-over-expected per 100 than Donkor.

Guys, it was since-retired MLS legend Darlington Nagbe. That’s really good company to keep!

Donkor will have to build on that this coming season, one that will likely see him playing at the back point of new head coach Michael Bradley’s 4-3-3 formation. The big issue now, I’m convinced, won’t be his ability to complete meaningful passes from that spot. Instead, it’ll be his ability to get on the ball enough to really dictate the game (Bradley himself was obviously superb at this).

If he adds that element to his game – just find the ball more, and make the game with it – he’ll probably be the most complete young d-mid in the league.

Oscar Verhoeven

Defender

Verhoeven was in the midst of breaking out – he was on a run of 10 straight starts – before a late-July leg injury prematurely ended his season for San Diego. They were able to make do without him, but I’m going into this year assuming Verhoeven will reclaim the starting job and make it his own, especially since SDFC activated the purchase option on his loan from the San Jose Earthquakes.

As I wrote last year, Verhoeven is not at all flashy; he’s registered no goals and just two assists in about 4,500 minutes between MLS and MLS NEXT Pro during his young career. But he’s positionally sound, largely mistake-free and brings an element of… toughness isn’t quite the right word (not to say he isn’t tough; he clearly is). It’s a sort of unfazed, unafraid doggedness. He just doesn’t get rattled, and that’s key if you’re going to succeed in Mikey Varas’s possession-heavy, “we dare you to press us” scheme.

Honestly, he might go the entire season without being part of a single highlight on either side of the ball, but he will also be one of the guys every coach mentions to me as someone they think doesn’t get enough pub.

Rayan Elloumi

Forward

Scouting is an inexact science, but there’s a pretty reliable rubric that’s taken shape over the past decade to try to figure out whether college and/or lower-division (mostly USL Championship, but now we’re seeing that it holds true for MLS NEXT Pro grads as well) forwards will succeed in MLS.

That last one is a measure of whether or not they know how to make runs to get on the ball in high-value spots, opening up attacking options not just for themselves, but for their teammates. It’s the one part of g+ that I subscribe to without any reservations. A center forward with a good receiving g+ number will almost always score goals in a functional MLS team.

The Vancouver Whitecaps are well beyond functional, and when Elloumi – who only turned 18 in September – cracked the rotation down the stretch, he fit right in with 2g/2a in about 380 minutes across all competitions. His receiving g+ for that small sample size was +0.06 per 90, which put him in the company of guys like Patrick Agyemang, Wessam Abou Ali and Hugo Cuypers. His MLS NEXT Pro receiving g+ was top five in that league (+0.13/90) on a much larger sample size, and he scored goals for fun at that level, and… you see what I’m saying, right? It scales. All of it. He checks all four boxes.

Elloumi just made his Canada national team debut and is second on the depth chart for Vancouver at the No. 9 behind Brian White. White is not exactly an ironman, but the Whitecaps would be foolish to bring in a more experienced backup. Elloumi’s ready.

I expect 2,000+ all-competitions minutes for him this year. And if he gets that, then I’d expect him to put up the type of numbers that might very well get him to the World Cup.