Nick Hagglund was the only player remaining on the 2024 roster who was out of contract, and did not have an option for 2025 headed into the offseason. Alec Kann was another player like that at the start of 2024, but his contract extension for 2025 made it so Hagglund was the lone ‘out of contract’ player.
“I mean, they've said that I'm going to be back,” Hagglund said in his exit interview last month. “We're all planning for me to be back, so I believe I'll be back.”
Chris Albright backed up that faith on Tuesday in his end of season meeting with the press.
“Nick will be here. Nick will be here. You know, I don't know that FCC Cincinnati can survive without Nick Hagglund,” Albright said with a laugh. “So he will be here. He will hopefully end his career here and hopefully at some point lend all his talents to our front office or some part of the organization. He's a cornerstone of what our locker room is really and so super important to what we do.”
So that seems to settle that. All that’s left is the formality of it.
That’s not an insignificant hurdle though. Among other important notes at Tuesday’s press availability with FC Cincinnati General Manager Chris Albright, the top soccer executive at FCC outlined some of the successes and challenges with the roster as it stands.
FC Cincinnati signed Kévin Denkey in a league record transfer fee, brought back Luca Orellano after triggering the buy option in his loan from Vasco De Gama. They also triggered the options on Miles Robinson, Obinna Nwobodo and Sergio Santo and made some difficult choices to open space on the roster as the club declined the contract options on seven players. Similarly, the buy option on Kevin Kelsy was not triggered and the young forward returned to Shakhtar Donetsk.
A lot of business to end the season.
This is where the roster challenges begin. There are now seven roster slots open to fill (as MLS allows for a 30 player roster total) and there are some league imposed budgetary constraints that may come into effect. For example, the seven players who’s options for 2025 were not picked up (London Aghedo, Joey Akpunonu, Yamil Asad, Isaiah Foster, Kipp Keller, Arquimides Ordoñez and Malik Pinto) occupy spots on the supplemental rosters, which limits the finances available to replace them. But also gives massive benefits if well executed.
“They're all different cases,” Albright said of the reason for those players' departures. “Some of them need to move on to places where they're going to play more. (Ordoñez) is a really good example of that. Some of them we have younger players coming up to the academy that may play their position, and we want to get those Academy kids those training minutes. So I think some of them fall in that category.
“But if you look at London, Joey, Isaiah, Quimi and Malik, all those guys were part of a championship winning team. So for them to contribute at that level, at that age, there's a lot of guys that will go their whole career and not win anything. So it was really hard to move on from a lot of those players. I think it's important to note the contribution that they had towards putting another trophy in the case at FC Cincinnati. So super appreciative for what they've done for us, and excited to see where a lot of their careers will continue to go.”
Supplemental roster spots, which represent the final 10 spots on the 30 man roster, have strict constraints like age and salary total, making who can fit into those spots more challenging. But if a player does fit onto the supplemental roster, their Salary Budget Charge does not impact the salary cap, meaning you can sign them and (potentially) not affect other projects.
That doesn’t mean the players who fill those slots can’t be impactful. Yamil Asad, for example, occupied one of those spaces in 2024 and was essential. Asad was a Supplemental Roster player in 2024, but the option on his contract would elevate him to a Senior Roster spot for 2025.
Which is why, Albright says, the club declined the option but are in continued talks to retain the services of Asad.
“We’re just trying to be creative with the salary cap,” Albright said Tuesday. “Yamil is a player we want back. He's a person we want back. He's an unbelievable kid. Was really such an additive presence in our locker room, and then maybe more unexpectedly than what we thought on the field. I know he always thought that he was going to have that impact, but he's a player we want to bring back, and we're working to do so.
“Effectively, the option was going to put him on the senior roster and count against the salary cap, and so we're trying to be creative and keep him on the Supplemental Roster.”
That is, essentially, an encapsulation of the challenges to building a roster in MLS. A player like Yamil Asad is already valuable, but is made extra valuable by his roster slot. Bringing in players who outperform their “slot” is part of the equation for success.
But when those players do outperform their slot, you have to work extra hard to keep them there or find a replacement. Neither an easy task. Albright though has become well known league wide for his creativity in roster building, and keeping players like Asad is a place to flex that muscle.
Another place for challenge in the roster is where to invest discretionary cash. Albright lamented on Tuesday this fact in reference to not retaining Kevin Kelsy beyond his loan date. The Venezuelan striker was here on loan from Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk and made a quick impact, but at times showed his youth and places for development. As a U22 initiative player the Salary Cap allowed for his spend, but per Albright a deal for his permanent sale to FCC couldnt be found due to a difference of evaluation.
“Kevin had a great year for a young kid coming from literally war torn Ukraine. I think that gets glossed over a lot. To come in and have the production that he did have the immediate impact he did in the summer. He's a player that we were super high on, are super high on. He's a really hard worker, a really good kid, it really came down to the evaluation difference between us and Shaktar,” Albright explained.
“We were too far apart there. We, aggressively as we could, tried to pursue keeping him. But in the end, given…look, resources aren't infinite. Our ownership group has tremendous ambition and gives us the resources to sign players…we think that the best use of allocating the remaining resources are maybe around the rest of the roster, given what Shaktar was asking.”
That’s the hard decision that needs to be made, and a decision that rarely needs to be made. Oftentimes these kinds of tough calls are made for you through circumstance, but when push comes to shove these decisions define the path forward.
So what is that path forward? What needs to happen next. As mentioned there are plenty of places on the supplemental roster to fill and both Hagglund and Asad are still in play. Academy product Stefan Chrilia, who at 18-years-old was a standout at the MLS NEXT and MLS NEXT Pro levels in 2023-2024, has joined the first team as a homegrown player and he slots neatly into one of those supplemental roster spots designated for homegrown players.
That’s where the work begins.
Albright said he is comfortable with where the roster is right now. That a core has been developed, and it’s just around building that core.
But that doesn’t mean things are set in stone. There are changes that will be made and work to be done.
“We still have a lot of work to do,” Albright reiterated. “Certainly movement that's going to happen with our team…we'll have a bunch of time to continue to add to this already competitive group and we feel comfortable with our starting points.”
