FIFA Club World Cup: Transfer targets for MLS clubs | OneFootball

By Matthew Doyle

The FIFA Club World Cup has always been a curiosity for MLS fans, a distant spectacle save for one, fleeting moment back in early 2023 when Seattle Sounders FC crashed the party.

Otherwise, it’s been where the best of LIGA MX get a puncher’s chance against the global elite, and where we’re reminded just how big the gap still is. But with every tournament, especially now that the inaugural edition of the expanded version is almost in the books, the curiosity has started to feel a little more urgent.

This isn’t just a proving ground for teams like Club América or CF Monterrey anymore: It’s a test case for what’s possible if MLS starts aiming a little higher. If you watched a few of these games from the past month – really watched them – you saw what the world’s best are doing differently. The movement, the tempo, the spatial awareness, the ruthlessness in the final third.

You also saw some of that from the MLS entrants – more, honestly, than I was expecting (as I wrote about last week). Along the way, it became clear that in order to close that gap, MLS teams would have to conduct themselves more like the Fluminenses and Flamengos of the world. Go after players in their prime, playmakers and goalscorers, backline generals and midfield orchestrators – all of whom can raise the ceiling and the floor.

That’s the opportunity this summer when the Secondary Transfer Window opens. Can MLS teams use the Club World Cup to make a splash at the deep end of the global transfer pool and sign some of the guys we saw this summer? They are gettable. Some of them want to be gotten.

So this column is for the sporting directors, the scouts and the decision-makers. Here are a few numbers to call:

CENTER FORWARDS

Most of the center forwards are either out of reach for MLS clubs (though I would love to see somebody here make an obscene offer to Juventus for Dušan Vlahović) or probably not good enough to move the needle (looking directly at you, Facundo Colidio at River Plate).

There are two guys, however – at very different price points, it should be clear – who make a lot of sense.

José Manuel López - Palmeiras

“Flaco,” as he’s known, is already on MLS radars – there was some real heat about a potential move to Columbus this past winter after Cucho Hernández was sold to Real Betis.

Flaco, like Cucho, is more of a No. 9 than not, but he’s also not purely a 9. He can drift very easily off the line and into the half-spaces as a playmaker, and even flares wide a little bit (though not as much as Cucho does).

He’s just 24 and his contract runs to the end of 2027, so this won't be a bargain buy. But he’s surplus at Palmeiras (he started only one of his CWC appearances), and the MLS links are already there. It might not be Columbus in the end, but if the Crew do get this guy, I wouldn’t bet against them adding another trophy to the cabinet.

David Datro Fofana - Chelsea FC

The Ivorian was purchased during the height of the Spending Madness that infected Chelsea’s front office and ownership structure a few years ago, and like so many that came to West London during that time, 1) he never really got a chance to settle in and 2) he’s already been recruited over, time and time again.

Fofana’s gone on multiple loans over the past two years, none of them productive. He’s under contract until 2029, which is a long time.

A loan to an MLS club – this one with an eye toward a permanent switch in which said MLS club simply assumes Fofana’s Chelsea deal (his salary is not onerous; reportedly it’s less than a max TAM deal), and Chelsea recoup part of their initial transfer fee – makes a ton of sense. One of the main virtues of this league of ours is stability, and some of the best goalscorers in league history (Josef Martínez, Bradley Wright-Phillips, etc.) found exactly that once they arrived here.

For what it’s worth, I’d imagine Fofana would cost about a third of what Flaco would.

WINGERS

Lots of wingers to choose from, young and old. This list could easily be three times as long as it is (with half the additions being “guys who are underperforming for Boca Juniors right now,” to be fair).

Pepê - FC Porto

The 28-year-old playmaking winger has been a mainstay at Porto, playing basically everywhere in the attack, and playing well throughout most of his time. So well that he’s on the fringes of La Seleçao. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say he’d be one of the very best players in MLS.

But here are a few things that seem to be lining up that make him gettable:

Porto want to hold onto their two young stars, center forward Samu Aghehowa and winger/attacking midfielder Rodrigo Mora, for one more year. Getting a big fee for Pepê – and to be clear, he’d probably become the MLS-record signing – would likely allow them to do that.

Raheem Sterling - Chelsea FC

I’m generally not a fan of taking on over-30 Euros – the success rate of those kinds of players has been very low since about 2018 or so (though the quartet of legends in Miami have obviously shown it can work if everyone’s bought in).

Someone should knock on the door about Sterling, though. He struggled to imprint himself on Arsenal’s 2024-25 season, where he played on loan, but still produced an assist about every 200 minutes across all competitions and had very good underlying chance creation numbers. And his 2023-24 season… 10g/11a in about 2,700 minutes across all competitions for Chelsea. That’s excellent stuff.

His salary is extremely high, in line with what Leo Messi earns down in Miami, and runs through the summer of 2027. Somebody here would have to be willing to really, really pay.

But the dude is one of the best wingers of the past decade – the type who gives his forwards tap-ins. He can still ball.

Carlos Martín - Atlético Madrid

Martín is a 23-year-old product of Atleti’s youth set-up who’s been a prolific goalscoring winger (and sometimes center forward) first at the youth levels, and then in LaLiga 2. He’s never been able to translate it to the top flight, though, and is almost certainly slated for a move this summer.

He’s under contract until the end of the decade and will most likely have interested parties elsewhere in Iberia, and he doesn’t have the kind of profile that makes him feel like a sure-thing MLS success just waiting to happen. As Myrto Uzuni has shown in Austin, prolific LaLiga 2 goalscoring does not automatically translate here. Signing Martín would be a risk.

But it’d be an interesting one. Lots of MLS teams need goalscoring wingers, and if you have the right structure around him (a true playmaker, an overlapping left back who can actually pass the ball), I think he’d be very good here.

ATTACKING MIDFIELDERS

The guys who make the game. True No. 10s have always been in style here in MLS, even if they’ve gone out of fashion in Europe.

John Kennedy - Pachuca/Fluminense

Kennedy, who just turned 23, had an excellent 2023 for Fluminense, fell off the face of the earth in 2024, and then went on loan to Pachuca where he was among the leading scorers while toggling between center forward, winger and attacking midfielder.

He is, in other words, a No. 10 in the way Diego Rossi has played the role this year in Columbus, rather than a more classic No. 10 like Carles Gil or Evander. So a team that plays a more fluid, attacking set-up makes a lot of sense, rather than one that would want him to drop into the midfield and orchestrate.

Santiago Rodríguez - Botafogo

Santi had a breakout year in 2024 with New York City FC, which he parlayed into a big move to the big-spending Brazilian side. They made both him and NYCFC an offer they couldn’t refuse.

And it just has not worked out. Santi managed only 42 minutes at the Club World Cup, and has played 430 minutes in total since the move. He's about the 25th man on that roster and is further from breaking into the Uruguay set-up than he was a year ago.

Whispers out of Brazil are that both the player and the club are unhappy, and both might be looking to move on. If you’re an MLS side in need of a No. 10 and you want a sure thing – someone you know can succeed at a high level in this league because he already has, and is just entering his prime – this is about as obvious as it gets.

Reinier - Real Madrid

The Brazilian was incredible as a 17-year-old for Flamengo back in 2019, so good that Real Madrid bought him for reportedly $30 million the day after he turned 18 in January of 2020.

It’s been an unhappy five years since, as Reiner, now 23 – still very young! – has bounced from one unproductive loan to another. This past season that meant a stop at Granada in LaLiga 2, and while he was relatively productive as a playmaker, with good underlying numbers, he fell out of the lineup almost entirely by the end of January.

He’s now entering the final year of his contract and could be had very cheap. He’s still got talent, but this is very much a reclamation project.

Gio Reyna - Borussia Dortmund

The mother of all reclamation projects here. Make this kid your No. 10, and you’re not just betting on him, you’re betting on your training staff. His career has been almost completely derailed by injuries (and some off-field stuff you know about, and I know about, and thus I don’t feel the need to get into).

But that talent…

The NYCFC academy product has to be desperate for playing time over the next year – it’s the only way he makes it back to the USMNT – so I’d be betting on that desperation to facilitate an optimal level of maturity.

Gio’s in the final year of his contract, barely played this year and Borussia Dortmund badly want to move him. This really could happen.

FOUR MORE TO THINK ABOUT