To understand what Austin FC's getting in new chief sporting officer Khaled El-Ahmad, it helps to look at what he did during his time with Minnesota United FC.
El-Ahmad was brought in to that club to be its sporting director and chief soccer officer in November 2023, following an 11th-place finish in the West that year. In the three subsequent years at the helm of the sporting operation, the Loons made the playoffs or (with 2026 still unfinished) were on track to make the playoffs. That's despite the tumult of bringing in one head coach — Eric Ramsay — who unexpectedly left to take a head coaching job in England after surprisingly arriving from his set piece coach position in England.
In his time with Minnesota. El-Ahmad engineered some intriguing moves that shaped the squad and showed the club's ability to find and develop talent. Even today, as he begins his work with Austin and Loons fans deal with the sporting director transition (and lob a few criticisms his way), they can take solace (if they're prone to do that) that the team's four leading goalscorers this season all came over during KEA's time as CSO.
We'll talk about three of them in a roundup of the best moves, but we should also mention that Tomás Chancalay, who I'm not even counting in his best five moves (considering both inbound and outbound), was a DP player with the New England Revolution that KEA then got in a $100,000 cash-for-player trade, albeit 18 months past an ACL injury. He might be underperforming his xG (as is primary goalscorer Kelvin Yeboah), but he's at worst competently eating moments for a team that's staying in the playoff hunt.
And in consulting with Jon Marthaler, who covers the Loons on a fresh new Substack after years of providing coverage for the Star-Tribune, he brought forth an additional slate of names — only one of which I cover below.
Nectarios Triantis, I think, will prove to be an awfully good move. Jefferson Diaz and Nicolás Romero have been good and under the radar. Anthony Markanich will go down as one of the best trades in MLS history, since the Loons basically got him for nothing from St. Louis, and turned him into an All-Star. Carlos Harvey came from the USL and has been quite useful for a small outlay. Owen Géne still could prove to be an excellent investment. Drake Callender is a good Dayne St. Clair replacement.
As far as outgoing moves go, I thought he did well to get value for both Joseph Rosales and Kervin Arriaga. And he got St. Louis to pay like two million dollars for Sang Bin Jeong. Admittedly it was from Lutz Pfannenstiel, as I recall, so it might not have been playing against the varsity, but that's still pretty good value.
With all that in mind, let's look at the moves that jumped out to me during KEA's tenure as especially sound.
