Well, this may explain some of the Loons’ irritating inaction so far this window.
By now you have assuredly heard/seen/read that Minnesota United is parting company with their chief soccer officer, Kahled El-Ahmad, who heads down to Austin to shape the roster ahead of Jim Curtin’s arrival next season.
Optically, this is awful for Minnesota. Their highly touted CSO, who arrived to clean up the mess Adrian Heath left following stints with Barnsley and Manchester City, departs after just 2.5 seasons. In the middle of a transfer window. Even worse, it fits a worrying pattern.
In one calendar year, the team has lost its CSO unexpectedly, its world-class coach with similarly abysmal timing and under suboptimal circumstances, and the reigning executive of the year when their CEO retired. The three may actually be unconnected, but coupled with Minnesota’s well-earned reputation for being one of MLS’ stingiest franchises, the narrative that this is all due to talented people being nickeled and dimed into oblivion is inevitable.
There’s no question something weird is happening with the team. Yes, Minnesota is thrifty and has always been, but the last two windows have been downright parsimonious:
| Player | Fee | Window |
|---|---|---|
| Kyle Duncan | Free | Winter |
| James Rodriguez | Free | Winter |
| Drake Callender | $450k in GAM | Winter |
| Peter Stroud | $480k in GAM | Winter |
| Tomás Chancalay | $100k | Winter |
| Mauricio Gonzalez | ~$1 million | Winter |
| Aziel Jackson | Loan | Summer |
This is a marked shift from previous years.
In summer 2025, the Loons added two players requiring fees at or above $2 million — Nectarios Triantis and Dominick Fitz — plus a few others. The window before that, they signed a pair of players requiring a fee in the same range — Owen Gene and Nicolás Romero — plus Jeong Ho-yeon for another million.
In summer 2024, the Loons signed Joaquin Pereyra for $3 million, Kelvin Yeboah for about the same, and Jefferson Diaz for almost a million. That winter window was admittedly very quiet, though the team was operating without a coach and KEA had joined fairly late as well.
Unless something changes in the last two weeks of the window, Minnesota will spend less in transfer fees than they have in any season since moving into Allianz Field. Even in other windows where they haven’t spent as much in fees, they’ve added considerable salary as they did with Teemu Pukki, and that hasn’t been the case this year either.
Is the move to the winter schedule terrifying ownership into locking down the books at the worst possible time?
Did they feel burned by spending a bit more in 2024 and 2025 without it resulting in silverware?
Have the delays in the construction of United Village caused a short-term cash crunch?
All are possible, but there’s no evidence for any of them. “The rich guys got cheap” is an easy story to fall back on, but what we’re seeing isn’t “penny wise, pound foolish” so much as “penny wise, buying an NFT in 2026 foolish”
Before this all broke, Wes Burdine wrote an excellent piece reflecting on last night’s debacle, giving voice to a feeling I have had quite a bit lately: The Loons have been bad before, but they’ve never looked as joyless as they do right now.
In a similar vein, I have a piece in queue about how the sudden fixation on Marcus Caldeira is emblematic of a fanbase desperately searching for a reason to hope things are going to get better.
Jon Marthaller superbly bridged the gap between that joyless malaise and today’s news, not suggesting causality because he’s too much of a pro to do that, but I have no such encumbrances anymore, so I will.
My first reaction to El-Ahmad’s departure was to think about how much chaos it was causing at the worst possible time for Minnesota. And while I’m sure there is truth to that, it gives me pause that people I trust have fallen into two camps:
- Boy, Minnesota is sure in bad shape right now and
- Y’all are going to LOVE the interim CSO, Hank Stebbins
The former is objectively true, but places no blame and burns no bridges; the latter is something Loons fans should be very excited about.
But missing from these is any excitement for the leader Austin is getting. I tend to agree with the view that Austin’s much larger budget will work better for El-Ahmad’s sensibilities; I think he can be successful there. But the collective yawn his side of the move is producing from people in the know makes me wonder how much of Minnesota’s lack of life on the field is a reflection of some of what’s happening off it.
There’s no scenario where losing your CSO with just days left in the transfer window is a good thing, and Minnesota’s prior departures make this one all the harder to take. But looking at who this team is right now, it’s hard not to wonder if this move needed to happen and that Minnesota will be better for it in the long run.
I just hope it isn’t too long a run.