Let's take a team-by-team look at where all 30 MLS clubs stand re: how they’re using their Designated Player and U22 Initiative slots. Think of it as a refresher as teams around the league report for preseason this week.
All of this is based on press releases, some reporting of my own, some cribbing from local coverage, and the official club roster profiles (which haven’t been updated since September, so take many of these designations with a grain of salt). Plus a dash of Tommy Scoops, the Backheeled gang and everyone else who covers the whole league tossed in.
Bear in mind two big things as you read this:
- MLS teams decide between building with 3 DPs/3 U22 slots, or 2 DPs/4 U22s/$2 million extra General Allocation Money (GAM). Throughout this column (and henceforth in all columns, really), I’ll be referring to this as 3/3 or 2/4/GAM.
- Many of these DP designations and literally all of the U22 designations are fungible. As such, teams often move guys into and out of these slots throughout the year to maximize cap space or limit allocation money usage.
In we go:
- DP slots: 2/3 - Myrto Uzuni, Brandon Vazquez
- U22 slots: 3/3 - Mateja Djordjevic, Nicolás Dubersarsky, Owen Wolff
Austin already did good work this winter in finding a taker for Osman Bukari, which opened up one DP slot – one they desperately need to use better than what they’ve traditionally managed. More on that below.
The other move they made was the obvious one: rewarding Wolff with a U22 deal after his breakout 2025 season. He was arguably the club’s best all-around player, and using a premium slot on him provides him financial security while giving the club a stronger position re: negotiating leverage when the likes of, let’s say, Feyenoord or Club Brugge come calling.
What comes next: My earnest hope is that sporting director Rodolfo Borrell goes out and gets a true playmaker for this bunch. My worry last year was that their mix of DPs and veterans lacked exactly that, and it largely proved true.
This year’s squad has, in theory, better balance, even if the fit between Uzuni and Vazquez (once Vazquez gets back from injury) is probably never going to be great. But you sleep in the bed you made, right? And “not great” isn’t the same as “unworkable” – get the right chance creator out there, and both those guys will score.
That’s how they’ll use that final DP slot. And the other “what comes next” part is, obviously, the hope that they can develop guys like Djordjevic and Dubersarsky as well as they developed Wolff.
- DP slots: 2/2 - Rafael Navarro, Paxten Aaronson
- U22 slots: 3/4 - Cole Bassett, Ted Ku-Dipietro, Josh Atencio
The Rapids haven’t officially done anything with their premium slots this winter. Yet. And that makes some sense, given that three of the guys listed above (Ku-DiPietro and Atencio last winter, and Aaronson in the summer) arrived in 2025.
Truth be told, none of them settled in. I don’t think any of them were a good fit for now-departed head coach Chris Armas’s system, and my hope is that new head coach Matt Wells can get them into spots to succeed. I think all three of them (as well as Navarro and Bassett, obviously) are starting-caliber at the very least.
They also signed Nigerian defensive midfielder Hamzat Ojediran, who is still just 22 years old but won't occupy a U22 slot. So there's some continued flexibility as the Wells era begins.
What comes next: My expectation at the start of the winter was that Navarro, who’s had significant interest from some of the biggest teams in Brazil, would have been sold by now.
The fact that he hasn’t been… I’m not sure it means anything. The interest is still out there, the Rapids have him under contract for the next three seasons, and Darren Yapi is ready to step into a starting No. 9 role. They can play hardball and squeeze the right price out of someone.
- DP slots: 1/2 - Petar Musa
- U22 slots: 5/4 - Patrickson Delgado, Kaick, Ran Binyamin, Enes Sali, Geovane Jesus
The way this roster is constructed, man… they have so many dudes. Too many dudes, to be honest, because a lot of them play in the same spots and most of them are just, like, replacement level.
The one who’s clearly not is Musa, who’s been one of the best signings anybody’s made in the past few years. But then you look at that list of U22s, and it’s kind of grim. Geovane Jesus has been hurt forever, Sali hasn’t panned out, Delgado’s development has been stop-start, and while Kaick’s first season was promising, there’s not much in his statistical profile (or, honestly, the eye test) that says he’s about to turn into Andrés Cubas or something.
Their latest gambit is on Binyamin, who was a part-time central midfield starter – a position where Dallas already have a ton of depth, mind you – in Israel’s top flight.
I don’t get it. This wasn’t a need.
What comes next: A departure of at least one of the U22s (though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was actually two that left).
But really, we’re all waiting for the arrival of the new DP No. 10. As frustrating as the team’s premium roster stuff has been, their internal development got back on track under Eric Quill last year and, over the second half of the season, they sure did look like they were a playmaker away from being quite good.
All the current links are to Frenchman Gauthier Hein. We’ll see.
- DP slots: 3/3 - Ezequiel Ponce, Guilherme, Ondřej Lingr
- U22 slots: 3/3 - Lawrence Ennali, Nelson Quiñones, Jack McGlynn
The Dynamo have done some shuffling so far this winter, and I’d expect them to drop one of last year’s signings – attacker Ondřej Lingr – from a DP slot into a TAM slot to open up enough space to make two moves. So for now it’s listed as 3/3 above, but take that with a grain of salt.
One of those was the addition of Guilherme, a 30-year-old Brazilian winger who’s made his bones playing against the ball for the past decade. He has seriously impressive underlying defensive numbers (and the fact that I led with his defensive numbers means you can guess what my thoughts are about his attacking contributions over the years).
That’s been it to this point. McGlynn was a hit last year, but both Ennali and Quiñones struggled coming back from injuries, and Ponce has been pretty meh in MLS. Pressure’s on.
What comes next: Mateusz Bogusz, maybe? The Polish attacker was very good as a false 9 a few years back for LAFC, parlaying that into a big-money move to free-spending Cruz Azul. It hasn’t quite worked out for him there, so it seems he’s ready to follow the well-trod path back to MLS.
Houston reportedly have priority rights on him and are working to get a deal done.
- DP slots: 2/3 - Manu García, Dejan Joveljić
- U22 slots: 0/3
New president of soccer operations and general manager David Lee, who arrived late last season after several years at New York City FC, sure has taken his time! Sporting KC didn’t even have a coach until last week, when it was announced that they’d hired former Chicago Fire FC boss Raphael Wicky.
Besides that, they haven’t made any significant moves at all – simply added a couple of back-ups in defense and goal (I think Stefan Cleveland could end up being a starter, though that’s beyond the parameters of this column).
The clock is ticking!
What comes next: Lots of signings, hopefully, because even beyond the premium slots, this roster is barren.
I fully expect Lee to choose the 3/3 roster build, by the way. NYCFC had a fairly mixed time with their U22s on his watch, and one of the things that his camp has sort of leaked out over the past six months is that those weren’t his signings, but were signings mandated by the mothership at City Football Group.
Whether that was truly the case or not, it’ll be fascinating to see how this all plays out. My guess is that, between now and first kick, this is the busiest team in the league.
- DP slots: 2/2 - Denis Bouanga, Son Heung-Min
- U22 slots: 3/4 - David Martínez, Igor Jesus, Artem Smolyakov
No premium roster slot moves yet this winter, though co-president and general manager John Thorrington, as always, has been busy building depth and flexibility down-roster with intraleague pick-ups.
And… that is basically that. This was the second or third-best team in the league by the end of last season, and they look set to run it back under new head coach Marc Dos Santos.
What comes next: Two things. The bigger one is “six months of soccer, at the end of which they might add a new DP following the 2026 FIFA World Cup.” It will be much easier to make a splash for a high-level player at that point than it is now – if, of course, they feel it necessary to add a DP-caliber player at all. They’ve frequently gone 2/4/GAM over the past few years.
The other thing that could be next is some sort of sale/trade/loan of Smolyakov, who seems to be very available. The injury to new acquisition Jacob Shaffelburg could put a stop to that, though. I had Shaffelburg penciled in as the second-choice left wingback in a 3-4-2-1, ahead of Smolyakov and behind Ryan Hollingshead. If he’s sidelined for a while, Smolyakov becomes much less movable.
And yes, I know that Dos Santos has said he wants to play a 4-3-3 this year; I just find the final three months of last year, most of which they spent in a 3-4-2-1, a more compelling argument for what they’ll actually look like in 2026.
Whatever formation they end up in, they’re loaded and have plenty of GAM to roll over from last year. So, could they sign another U22 or DP? Yeah, definitely. Will they? I highly doubt it.
Unless, of course, Smolyakov is actually moved. In which case, they’ve clearly got something cooking.
- DP slots: 3/3 - Joseph Paintsil, Gabriel Pec, Riqui Puig^
- U22 slots: 3/3 - Julián Aude, Lucas Sanabria, Matheus Nascimento?
Just devastating news earlier this month when it was confirmed that Riqui’s ACL repair from ahead of last season didn’t take, and that he’d have to go under the knife once again – which means he’s missing all of this season as well. He sees passes that only one other guy in the league can see:
The silver lining for the Galaxy is that by putting him on the Season-Ending Injury List, they will have opened up his DP slot for use this year. So you can consider them to be 2/3 on DPs in the above list, or maybe 2/2 and 3/4 on U22s?
And yes, there will be at least three U22s on this year’s roster, as all signs point to Nascimento returning for a second year.
What comes next: A decision on the above.
Given their need for GAM and the fact that they’ve got Marco Reus in town to play as the No. 10 for, hopefully, 2,500 minutes this year, it kind of makes sense for them to go 2/4/GAM. They’d suddenly have the flexibility they need to bring Diego Fagúndez back, as well as to add a U22 playmaker.
Ideally, of course, LA would eventually start producing guys like that – and there’ve been no shortage of U22-caliber domestic playmakers signing homegrown deals recently – via their academy and MLS NEXT Pro set-up. They’re finally starting to squeeze some water from that particular stone, though it’s more in the form of midfield ball-winners and central defensive depth. Baby steps.
- DP slots: 2/2 - Joaquín Pereyra, Kelvin Yeboah
- U22 slots: 3/4 - Nicolás Romero, Nectarios Triantis, Owen Gene
Most of their incoming business has been in a holding pattern as they’ve seen one free agent after another and then finally their head coach all depart. It has been a dispiriting offseason in that regard for Loons fans.
The good news is they’re still sitting on a mountain of GAM and one premium roster slot.
That said, they did get Tomás Chancalay in a cash trade with the Revs, and Chancalay was a DP as recently as last year. Obviously, things didn’t work out for him in New England, but he’s got real talent. If new head coach Cameron Knowles can unlock it, in theory, it’s like adding another DP to the roster without using a slot.
What comes next: I’m not sure anything does. Despite the loss of a bunch of key guys, this roster is still very deep (everywhere except left wingback, anyway) and pretty good – potentially more than that if Knowles can get Yeboah and Pereyra to consistently perform like DPs.
It feels like the smart play is to focus on the guys in the locker room now and then to add a big piece in the summer, as they did last year with Triantis. And for the time being, staying in the 2/4/GAM build allows chief soccer officer and sporting director Khaled El-Ahmad to preserve at least part of that huge pile of cash he’s sitting on.
- DP slots: 3/3 - David Da Costa, Kristoffer Velde, Jonathan Rodríguez
- U22 slots: 2/3 - Antony, Kevin Kelsy
All three of Portland’s DPs are full DPs who can’t be bought down. Two of the three – Da Costa and Rodríguez – will start the year on the injured list. Da Costa, at least, will come off of it in due time.
Rodríguez… I don’t know. He was very good (though maybe not exactly a favorite of head coach Phil Neville) in 2024, then got injured in 2025, and some reports say he won’t be back fully healthy until the summer of 2026.
Add in the sale of U22 midfielder David Ayala, who was supposed to be the centerpiece of the next half-decade, and it’s been a very frustrating winter so far for Timbers fans. Almost all exits, and some real questions over what direction things will go over the next few years.
This is especially relevant because the Timbers have basically always been built around their DPs, and have tended to get pretty good contributions from their U22s. If the guys in those slots aren’t hitting, they don’t have the internal talent pipeline to compensate.
What comes next: I’m assuming they find a number that works for both them and Rodríguez and part ways.
And at that point… look, the sale of Ayala helped replenish the coffers, but Portland really could use some GAM. They had exactly $0 of it back in September, the last time we got an update. So there’s a strong argument for 2/4/GAM.
But as I said, this is a club built, for the entirety of their existence, on their DPs (and on Diego Chara, who came to the league as a DP 15 years ago but hasn’t been one since 2013 and has Father Time in a death grip). And thus, my guess is they’ll swing big to replace Rodríguez.
- DP slots: 1/2 - Diogo Gonçalves
- U22 slots: 3/4 - Diego Luna, Dominik Marczuk, Ariath Piol
Nothing has officially come out yet, but it sure does seem like Rwan Cruz’s time with RSL has come to an end. He came in mid-season last year as a DP on loan from Botafogo, and was… I’m going to be nice and say he wasn’t DP-caliber. The loan originally ran through this summer, but it looks like RSL’s brass figured out a way to end it early.
That opens up one DP slot. They also have an open U22 slot.
Now I want you to look at the names listed above, and also consider Cruz and Nelson Palacio, who’s a U22 out on loan to FC Zurich (his loan is structured in such a way as to free up the U22 slot he’d otherwise be occupying).
The only hit is Luna, who didn’t come in as a premium guy, but instead played his way into one. Which is to say their talent ID and integration at the top of the roster has been lacking.
What comes next: Better signings, hopefully?
RSL have a productive academy and MLS NEXT Pro pipeline, and actually get stuff from some SuperDraft picks every now and then. The floor stays high because of that.
They’ve got to get the ceiling-raisers right. It’s been too long.
A confounding issue in all this is that it’s unclear whether this team will play a 4-4-2 or a 4-3-3 next year. Personally, I would lean in the direction of a 4-3-3, but I’m not actually calling the shots there.
Another confounding issue: how soon do they need a succession plan for Luna? Will he be sold immediately after the World Cup, or will he be around through, say, mid-2027?
Lots to juggle.
- DP slots: 2/2 - Chucky Lozano, Anders Dreyer
- U22 slots: 2/4 - Tomás Ángel, Pedro Soma
The biggest news out of San Diego this winter is a move that hasn’t been made yet: sporting director and general manager Tyler Heaps announced last week that Lozano, the club-record signing, is not in the club's plans for 2026. He is officially being shopped.
Now, if you’re a club executive, you don’t usually make an announcement like that unless you’ve already got one fish on the hook. So yeah, this struck me as Heaps trying to gin up a bidding war (my guess is it’d be the likes of the LIGA MX grandes, as well as the Monterrey clubs involved) for Lozano’s services. But I don’t know that for sure.
What I do know is that their knack for talent ID, integration and development was second to none last year, which is how they were able to clinch the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference while leaving a bunch of premium slots open and keeping literal millions worth of GAM untouched.
What comes next: A Lozano move will come at some point, and I’ll assume that’ll be in conjunction with another DP signing. But I don’t know that for sure.
I do know they need central midfield depth, which seems like a great place to use those U22 slots. I’ll be surprised if there aren’t a couple of additions there before this window is closed.
The other thing to keep an eye on… as I mentioned last week, there is at least some smoke to the “Mo Salah to San Diego” stuff. Though I don’t believe that would happen before summer.
- DP slots: 1/3 - Chicho Arango
- U22 slots: 1/3 - Noel Buck
Two of the biggest DP stories of the winter:
- San Jose failed to exercise their option on Cristian Espinoza in time, which allowed him to sign as a free agent with Nashville. Bad.
- The Earthquakes are seemingly about to push a deal through for RB Leipzig and German international forward Timo Werner. Very, very good. Potentially great.
Sporting director and head coach Bruce Arena’s always shown a degree of formational flexibility – his great D.C. United teams of yore played primarily out of a 4-4-2 diamond, as did his Supporters’ Shield-winning Revs team. His great Galaxy teams played a sort of 4-1-3-2 with a “Y”-shaped midfield, and his best USMNT years came with that team playing a sort of flat 4-4-2.
Last year’s Quakes were more of a 3-4-2-1 team, and while the attack was electric, the defense never quite worked. I’m kiiind of guessing that it’ll be a return to the 4-4-2 diamond this year, with Werner and Chicho (a pretty natural pairing) up top. Given the number of central midfielders and overlapping fullbacks they’ve got to choose from, and the relative lack of wide creators – especially with Espinoza gone – it seems like the best bet.
Note that Hernán López, who came in as a DP No. 10, is on loan through the end of 2026 in a way that opens up that DP slot.
What comes next: A new DP No. 10? I’d like to imagine they’d use homegrown Niko Tsakiris in that role – he’s every bit as talented as other domestic No. 10s like Brian Gutiérrez, Diego Luna and Jack McGlynn – but I can’t imagine Arena trusting this season to a kid.
What I don’t particularly expect is for this team to go out and sign a bunch of U22s, even if they have the room to do so. That’s just never how Arena’s built a team, and frankly, when you look at how productive their academy is starting to become, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to go out and start importing guys who are probably inferior to their own talent pipeline.
- DP slots: 3/3 - Pedro de la Vega, Albert Rusnák, Jordan Morris
- U22 slots: 2/3 - Reed Baker-Whiting, Nikola Petković
We all knew that Seattle weren’t going to make any big moves this winter, as, for one, they’re locked in on de la Vega, Rusnák and Morris as full DPs through the end of this year (and potentially through the end of next year; de la Vega and Morris are guaranteed, while there’s a club option on the final year of Rusnák’s deal). And also, the Sounders typically don’t go out and spend a lot or all that often.
I went to Transfermarkt to confirm, and their numbers tell the story: go back a decade, and Seattle’s spent $1 million or more on transfer fees on just eight players. Seven of them have been successes.
Nobody else in the league has a hit rate anywhere close to that.
Anyway, I love the Petković acquisition. He was a guy that Charlotte FC reportedly spent $3 million on a few years ago but didn’t really develop, and so Seattle – who might have an Obed Vargas-sized hole to fill soon, and will need central midfield depth even if they don’t – were able to get him in on a loan with an incredibly affordable buy option.
They’re betting on their own developmental processes here. And when you have their track record… why not?
What comes next: I’m hoping it’s a U22 deal for Obed, but that ship may already have sailed.
Regardless, this gets my vote for the best-constructed roster in the league. Player development is the silver bullet in MLS, and the Sounders have cracked the code.
- DP slots: 3/3 - Marcel Hartel, Roman Bürki, João Klauss
- U22 slots: 3/3 - Jake Girdwood-Reich, Fallou Fall, Sang Bin Jeong
Look, last year was weird. St. Louis went into the summer window with two open premium slots and then-sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel on a short leash. Usually, in that circumstance, a club would say “no new signings, because we don’t want to saddle a potential new era with more high-level contracts to unwind. You have to make the club you’ve already built show it can work.”
Instead, they let Pfannenstiel sign Fall (a move I liked) and San Bin Jeong (a move I didn’t) in mid-July. He wasn’t operating like a guy on a short leash. And then, a month later, it turns out he very much was, and they parted ways.
Ok, well, at least they had some flexibility with their DP slots! Surely the new sporting director would get to fill those, what with Klauss coming into an option year and one slot still open.
Except… nope. On Oct. 18, still with no sporting director officially named, Bürki was re-signed as a DP. Four days later, they announced Klauss’s option had been exercised.
It was two weeks after that when they finally named a new sporting director in Corey Wray. Once again, the order of operations was… really weird.
Now, could Wray have been joysticking this from behind the scenes a little bit before he officially got the job? Absolutely!
But it is still strange to me that, six months ago, you’d have looked at St. Louis and been like “hey, at least the new sporting director will get to fill four or five premium roster slots.” And in actuality, he’s gotten to fill none of them.
What comes next: Both Bürki and Klauss can be bought down to TAM, which is significant for obvious reasons. And Girdwood-Reich is on loan with Auckland City; it’s not yet clear whether or not that opens up a U22 slot (my guess is Wray will figure something out).
But it’s just… there’s not a lot of maneuvering to do here. The real trick for Wray and new head coach Yoann Damet will be to get St. Louis – who are sitting atop a gold mine of local talent – to start approaching player development the way the Sounders or Philadelphia Union do.
If (when?) they manage that, this team has as high a floor as anybody in the league.
- DP slots: 3/3 - Andrés Cubas, Ryan Gauld, Thomas Müller
- U22 slots: 2/3 - Édier Ocampo, Kenji Cabrera
No premium roster movement despite the real interest in Cubas among some of Brazil’s top clubs. I haven’t heard anything that suggests Vancouver are going to get a Godfather offer – and it’d have to be significant, as Cubas is under contract through 2027 – but it’s something to monitor.
Rather, the only moves have been the trade of Jayden Nelson to Austin FC and the sale of Ali Ahmed to Norwich City. On the one hand, those are a hit to Vancouver's wing depth. But on the other hand, that opens starting jobs for potentially both Gauld and Cabrera (though Emmanuel Sabbi will surely have some say in that).
The ‘Caps are loaded, though. As with the Sounders, it’s because they’ve done such a good job of developing players both from within, as well as most of the guys they’ve signed.
What comes next: Right now their winger depth chart is three names long, and you’ve already seen them: Gauld, Sabbi and Cabrera in some order.
I suspect a fourth name will be added to that list soon, and it’ll be how they use their open U22 slot – probably one who’s more of a pure winger than Cabrera is (he’s more of a half-space merchant).
Alternatively, I could see them signing a veteran depth piece (Johnny Russell, anyone?) to help get them through the first half of the year and then making a move for a U22 in the summer.
Either way, wing depth is really the only thing to focus on at the moment. This team’s loaded.
