Think globally: First Charlotte FC MLS roster will have a lot of international players
It’s been a slow and steady process of player signings for Charlotte FC. The yearlong delayed start has given the city’s MLS club more runway to build its first team, and rather than 30 names for fans to follow, there have only been three roster additions over the course of a year.
Despite the club’s muted start, team scouts have hardly stalled as they mine the globe for the next MLS talent, interchanging players on a seven-man Discovery List for recruitment priority, and looking for the right opportunities within the league, country and around the world.
The budding roster reflects the club’s expansive philosophy. Spanish midfielder Sergio Ruiz was recruited from Racing Santander, a team in Spain’s Second Division, and is playing on loan with Las Palmas. Riley McGree is an attacking midfielder from Australia recruited from Adelaide United. He’s playing on loan for Birmingham City in England. Midfielder Brandt Bronico is a North Carolina native who joined the team by trade with Chicago Fire FC. (His loan situation has not been determined, but he’s expected to remain in the United States.)
Charlotte FC director of scouting Thomas Schaling said it’s “not a coincidence” that the club’s first players come from all over the map.
“We really have been looking all across the globe,” Schaling said. “We’ve been looking at the lower levels in Europe, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe. Latin America is always an interesting market, Central America, Asia.”
“I can’t get specific because it’s not that specific,” he added. “We’re looking everywhere.”
Before joining Charlotte FC last January, Schaling was the international senior scout for PSV Eindhoven, a club that plays in the top Dutch division, Eredivisie. There he helped sign Mexican international stars Hirving Lozano and Andrés Guardado, and two-time Premier League winner Oleksandr Zinchenko.
Schaling now works closely with Charlotte FC’s sporting director Zoran Krneta, who co-founded the global scouting network Star Sports & Entertainment. Krneta has been touted by the club as having an extensive international network, while other front office members have more knowledge of the U.S. soccer scene.
“All of us together, we bring something different and it’s been working out really well so far,” Charlotte FC director of player personnel Bobby Belair said. “We’re really excited to sign some more players and keep this train rolling.”
Belair served in the similar role overseeing the salary budget and MLS roster rules for Atlanta United before arriving at Charlotte. He and Charlotte FC technical director Marc Nicholls have elevated the club’s contacts in MLS and college, USL and academy landscapes.
While homegrown talent remains a priority, the club’s international names won’t stop at Ruiz and McGree, Belair said. Charlotte FC plans to use all eight of its international roster slots and could potentially trade for more. The club also intends to fill all three Designated Player slots, which account for players whose total compensation and acquisition costs exceed the league’s maximum salary budget charge, although those signings will likely come closer to kickoff.
“We don’t want to rush into any bad decisions,” Belair said of the DP spots. “So we’ll take our time with it.”
Notable DP contracts around the league have included those of Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez (expected to be the highest-paid player in MLS), Zlatan Ibrahimovic ($7.2 million) and Michael Bradley ($6.5 million). Belair and Schaling acknowledged the importance of getting the DP signings right because, as Schaling noted, “you expect those guys to make the difference.”
“It’s not about signing a big name necessarily,” Schaling said. “Because for MLS, those guys have been a little hit and miss, so we’re just looking for the right guys.”
The calculated approach the club is taking means the timeline remains fluid for the next wave of names. The MLS transfer window reopens Feb. 10 and closes May 4, but the club is targeting the secondary transfer window over the summer, potentially coinciding with an announcement on a head coach, to build out its roster before the expansion draft.
Belair said the goal was to make the team competitive from its first season in 2022, but also to be sustainable by accounting for its budget over the next three to five years. The maximum salary budget for each club changes annually, per the league’s CBA, which has been the subject of ongoing disputes between MLS and the Players Association during the pandemic.
“We want to take that longterm strategy rather than come out of the gates firing and potentially put ourselves in a hole with the salary cap and limit ourselves in years two, three, four with what we can do,” Belair said.
Schaling agreed that the team is in no rush to make commitments. He said scouts are continuing to watch and wait, and feel they’re in a good place with the three players signed so far. There is no goal at the club to sign a certain number of players per transfer window.
“It’s all based on finding the right deals, finding the right players,” Belair said. “We have a flexible number in mind and we’ll just react accordingly.”
Despite the deep pockets of billionaire team owner David Tepper, Belair noted that the league is salary-cap driven. Still, Tepper’s presence would likely be a benefit when it comes to negotiating terms with expensive international DPs, which Belair said would be individually presented and called a “case-by-case” decision.
“He’s definitely going to support us,” Belair said.
While those discussions to manifest deals are ongoing, the scouting process remains active at Charlotte FC. The whole world is essentially the team’s oyster, with more time to mine it for the next pearl.
“We’ve had this team ready to hit the ground running from the start,” Schaling said. “Our scouts were some of the first people in, which I think was really important. Obviously, we didn’t know about the delay then, so we just assumed we had a year.
“It turning out to be two (years) definitely has some advantages when it comes to building up our database and assessing more players.”
This story was originally published January 19, 2021 at 7:00 AM.
