The WFC2 season is about to get underway, so I wanted to take a look at the players they have added to the squad and how the 2026 MLSNP season is shaping up. Let’s start with the signings (which are surprisingly numerous) in reverse order of how excited I am for them.
Marko Popović/20/CF
I can’t lie, I don’t really see the vision here. At first glance, Popović seems to have an intriguing background as he joins from the Bayern Munich reserves. But once you put that background under a microscope, it starts to look a bit flimsy.
For starters, I’m not sure there is any evidence that Popović has ever scored a goal against an adult. He absolutely smashed the Serbian U-17 league with 22 goals and an assist in 2251 minutes. But he wasn’t able to maintain this level of performance in U-20 football, scoring just 4 goals in 953 minutes. The only senior football he has played that has made its way to Transfermarkt or Wyscout (represented in the chart above) was on loan in the German regional leagues (the 4th tier of their pyramid) where he failed to score at all and rarely got on the pitch.
Popović is 6’4″, which is a plus, but when you look at his career trajectory to this point, it paints the picture of somebody who got big early and dominated his peers but wasn’t able to maintain that level of play against players who could match him physically. Obviously, I’m only going off stats from a very small sample size, and it’s possible Popović will prove me wrong. But based on this information available to me, this doesn’t look great!
More broadly, I don’t think signing players released from academies or second teams of big clubs in Europe are that good of a strategy for MLSNP foreign signings. Europe is the most scouted continent with the most data coverage by far. It’s therefore difficult to identify a young player with MLS level potential that all the other European teams of a similar level don’t also know about. Of course, the nature of MLSNP players is that they are all kind of a long shot. But I think your ability to attract the players with the best chance of making the MLSNP to first team jump from Europe is limited.
Looking at players that I have covered for Target Scouting, I think someone like Morgan Wellsbury or Dylan Klaassen-Thomas, similarly aged strikers who don’t have the Bayern Munich cache but have played and scored a lot against grown men. It doesn’t literally have to be one of those guys, but generally, I would prefer someone like that.
Trevor Wright/23/CB
I do see the vision here but, the vision is rather mundane. You have to walk an interesting line when building an MLSNP squad because moves that will cause the team to win are not necessarily the moves that are best for the club overall. It would be pretty easy to load a team up with 23-year-olds and roll over a league that is full of teenagers. But that squad probably wouldn’t graduate many players capable of making an impact in MLS. Conversely, a team of 16-year-olds that gets beaten 4-0 every week probably isn’t conducive to player development either. So you need a balance between young high upside prospects and slightly older players who ensure the team maintains a baseline of competitiveness.
Enter Trevor Wright, college free agent with excellent ball progression numbers who perhaps looks a little squishy on the defensive side of things. I think it would be better to get somebody a tad younger, as you do still want your veterans to have a chance at becoming first team contributors, even if it’s a slim one. Unless Wright is the Virgil Van Dijk of MLSNP, he is unlikely to ever feature for the first team simply because he turns 24 this year. But he is clearly pretty nice with it in possession so he should serve the team big brother role reasonably well.
Prince Amponsah/22/CB
Pretty much all of my comments about Wright also apply to Amponsah, right down to being the same general profile of player. But Amponsah registers slightly higher on the excitement scale because he is a year younger and an MLS team at one point thought he was good enough to warrant a homegrown deal (although he never actually played for NYCFC). I do wonder how a centre-back manages to only have a 30% aerial duel win rate but, I guess we’re about to find out!
Cristiano Bruletti/21/CM
Bruletti is relatively young for a college free agent and should slot in next to Yuma Tsuji in a double pivot (assuming the second team mirrors the tactics of the first team). The word that comes to mind when I look at that radar is “meh.” Bruletti has a reasonably high number of defensive actions but his ball progression and final 3rd impact are middling. Bruletti’s age means he has a tad more runway to develop than some other signings but, based on his college numbers, I’m not sure how much upside there is here.
Michaah Garnette/22/LB
Garnette rates slightly higher on the excitement scale than Bruletti because he does have one standout stat, his progressive carries. He also has a pretty strong dribble success rate, so this is clearly a player with some sauce. Nikola Djordjevic had a similar statistical profile coming out of college and did well enough to earn an MLS deal, so maybe there’s something here. 0.08 xA seems a little low, however, suggesting to me that he’s struggling to turn his dribbling into chances for teammates. At 22, he will have to be quite dominant to earn a first team deal, but he at least looks fun.
Daniel Ittycheria/22/CF/W
Ittycheria was drafted by D.C. United, so if my understanding of the MLS rules is correct, the Whitecaps will have to trade for his MLS rights if they want to sign him to a first-team deal. He looks like the sort of guy who dominates MLSNP: a play-driver with a fantastic physical profile. His offensive outputs aren’t quite on the level of truly elite talents to come out of college football, but he’s a monster in the air and has a ton of progressive actions for a striker (though from his highlights it seems he sometimes plays on the wing). At a minimum, he should be a lot of fun in MLSNP, and if he really pops off, he could prove to be a useful versatile depth attacker at MLS level.
Immanuel Mathe/20/CB
Mathe returns to WFC2 after a year away in the NCAA. Mathe showed promise as an 18-year-old in the 2024 season nailing down a starting spot and earning a call-up to Canada’s U-20 squad. With some more experience under his belt, he will hopefully be in a position to push for a first team contract. Mathe is a strong duel-winner who the ‘Caps will hopefully be able to add some in-possession ability to his game.
Overall Thoughts:
On the whole, WFC2 has been incredibly successful since its rebirth. It has provided a consistent stream of first team players, both stars like Ali Ahmed and solid depth like Isaac Boehmer and J.C Ngando. So, the criticisms offered in this article are minor quibbles in the grand scheme of things. That said, I feel that this season’s squad has a bit too much filler in it. None of these signings on their own is particularly damnable, but there are a lot of players here who are most likely just here to fill a spot for one season before being moved on. As I have outlined, older domestic players do have a role to play in a healthy MLSNP side, but 5 players 22 or older (the four outlined in this article plus draft pick Yeimar Zuluaga) is maybe a tad excessive. As an alternative, I would like to see a few more players in the Cyprian Kachwele mold. That is to say, raw young players who are showing promise at a relatively low level of professional soccer. The hit rate on these guys is not necessarily going to be that high (though I doubt it would be much worse than the parade of undrafted 22-year-olds), but if you manage to snag the Ali Ahmed of Kenya or New Zealand, then the profit margin will be spectacular.
I also think this team is going to win a lot of games. Even if I am skeptical of the long term potential of many of these free agent signings, there are a lot of guys here who look like they could successfully bully less experienced players. They are also joining a core of academy graduates who showed flashes last year and will be looking to secure a first team place (Johnny Selemani, Liam Mackenzie, Yuma Tsuji, etc.). In other words, this is a team that is full of the type of guy who does well in MLSNP. That doesn’t always translate to being good in MLS, but it is an important prerequisite.