Nicky Beloko is Verde ... but is he a difference maker or a redundancy?
Nicky Beloko, perhaps unsurprisingly given the rumors, is now Verde. But where does that leave a squad that already has similar players in the midfield?
As it turns out, the first signing of the Austin FC 2025 summer transfer window was committed all the way back in January.
Nicky Beloko, the Swiss-Cameroonian midfielder who most recently played for FC Luzern in the Swiss Super League, was officially announced on Monday as the latest Austin FC player, but signed a pre-contract back in January, and has been preparing to play in MLS for longer than we previously knew.
While he won't be able to officially appear for the club until the summer transfer window opens July 24 — meaning he'd first be available for the July 26 match at D.C. United – the club's press release noted he can begin training with the club on Tuesday morning and already has his P-1 Visa secured, meaning it's a safe bet that he was in Austin when he recorded this "hello, guys" video (or, at least, when the club released it on Monday afternoon).
By now, you've likely heard about the jersey release party in February — the one where Austin FC sporting director Rodolfo Borrell cavalierly let me know Myrto Uzuni was just days away from arriving in Austin to quell speculation.
There, he also let a fan know that a new player was coming, of a nationality (or, as it turns out, two nationalities) requiring that fan to add a flag patch to his vest of flag patches celebrating the nations of past and present Verde signings. Fans dialed in spent part of Monday connecting dots to realize Beloko was that player.
From what limited information we have about him — as the Swiss Super League isn't especially well tracked by world football data collectors – we know the following:
Per Transfermarkt, he is most typically deployed as a central midfielder: He can pass, he can defend, he can cover ground — it's got the jack-of-all-trades variety of praise that I believe came our way when Besard Šabović signed with the club (and we at least had some limited-minutes charts on him).
He's signed through 2028 with a 2029 option — given that he's 25 now, Austin FC sporting director Rodolfo Borrell has deemed him solid enough to lock up for what are presumably his prime years with the door open to renewing him for his late prime.
If you haven't seen him in action yet, here's some video from 2023-24 that shows him in action, starting with him showing off his crossbar challenge skills with a shot from distance. (What does it say about the highlight reel compilers that the first clip out of the gate is an impressive attempt that nonetheless, based on striking woodwork, doesn't even count as a shot on target?)
What we can also glean about him, based on his Swiss Super League stats alone, is he's not an appreciable source of goals and assists, but based on all this highlight footage — despite one impressively athletic stop of an attack — he's not quite a destroyer defensive midfield type either. He's, in soccer position parlance, an 8.
Specifically, the wild card variety of 8 who does a lot of things reasonably well but not one specific thing emphatically well (like feed attackers key passes or shut down opposition attacks or deftly connect a back four to a front three).
In other words, he might just be a lot like Šabović, Owen Wolff, and Dani Pereira. While all those players possess some slight differences in their games that make them granularly distinctive, they're still largely interchangeable central midfielders playing for a team that's currently scoring 0.75 goals a game.
That brings us to loud vociferous complaining from MLSSoccer.com's Matthew Doyle which I think is actually warranted.
And it also brings me to a recurrent frustration I've had every season, and we're now on the fifth — there's not anyone remotely close to a heliocentric No. 10 on this team who yearns, above all else, to rack up assists.
Pining for a 10
A few weeks ago, we broke from the Verde All Day policy of not getting prematurely excited about a transfer rumor by indulging in the Kervin "Tuti" Andrade rumor. He's a 20-year-old Venezuelan international, currently with Brazilian side Fortaleza, described by The Athletic last year as "a little magician of an attacking midfielder, a one-man through-ball workshop who loves to skip past defenders and also takes a mean free kick."
Keep that in mind when explore Doyle's assessment of Austin in the wake of the team's 2-0 loss to the Sounders on Saturday:
Austin don’t look like they’re quitting, they just look like a team that spent $35m on attacking players and somehow managed not to buy even one guy who can complete a fucking pass.
And then, he doubled down in his weekly power rankings (where Austin is unsurprisingly 18th) by saying, "Please god go acquire someone who can pass the damn ball."
While Beloko could turn out to be a serviceable and even solid addition to the squad when all is said done, he also took one of the two remaining senior spots and international spots Verde had on its roster. They're now down to one senior international spot, which because of the Leo Väisänen departure, is likely being saved for a center back. (To briefly acknowledge another rumor, it wouldn't be surprising if that center back is Mickaël Nadé, a Saint-Étienne defender who looks like a Borrell signing and would also give Beloko someone to speak French with.)
While an additional center back would be good, that would take the final senior roster spot for a team that is now relying heavily on ostensibly-do-it-all midfielders that don't generate assists. Owen Wolff co-leads the team with four, but his count is set piece heavy, with Osman Bukari (also with four) generating the most open-play assists from his wing position.
(Four is still not a lot; Andres Dreyer currently leads the league with 14, and Manu García and Philip Zinckernagel lead among midfielders with nine each. By contrast, Pereira has one and Šabović has one, so four is a lot for this team, where Diego Rubio in his 209 minutes has the same 1g/1a total as Uzuni in his 1228 minutes and 10 times the salary[[1]].)
Could someone be out?
It's possible that Andrade is still in the plans, but the plans are reliant on a current midfielder leaving in the summer transfer window. If I were to bet on one candidate, it would be Wolff, who has raised his stock appreciably this season. He's young enough and good enough to conceivably make the move to Europe; Austin would just need to find a suitor meeting his valuation (or field an offer from an interested team), and determine that the money gained could be appreciably reinvested in the roster[[2]].
It's also conceivable that Pereira could move, most likely in a player for GAM move within the league. Given his age and ceiling, Pereira's more likely to entice an MLS team than a European one; I could see him providing midfield depth to a team looking to make a deep playoff run.
Also, the North End Podcast has floated another possibility regarding a midfielder we haven't talked about: Ilie Sánchez, who has gone from captain and opening-day starter to not appearing at all in the most recent match, not starting since May 28 against RSL, and not going a full 90 since the match against the Whitecaps on May 17. They describe a midseason retirement and a move to coaching as having a "non-zero" chance of happening.
That would conceivably leave Austin a little thin at the 6, but that's sort of what Šabović has been (sort of) doing in recent weeks, in a game plan that puts out two or three central midfielders depending on the formation, with Austin FC head coach effectively waving his hands and saying "Do some midfield things."
The concern there, of course, is that's had mixed results. Against the Red Bulls, the team looked decisive and in control thanks in large part to midfield play; against the Sounders, they looked toothless and overwhelmed against a team of players who know their roles and a coach really good at assigning and making clear those roles.
Every transfer window is a Rubik's Cube, and we're currently once again at the stage where the colors are all jumbled. It could just be a couple of moves from getting solved, or it could continue as a jumble of colors by the end of the window. Now that we know quite early it's being worked on, it's time to see if anything unexpected follows what's expected.
[[1]]: If you're looking at guaranteed compensation per the new salary guide out last week — which is different from the base salary listing — Rubio's at $208,000 and Uzuni's on $2.25 million.
[[2]]: Of course, with Wolff still a supplemental player rather than a senior player, it doesn't fix that crucial element of roster building.
Verde All Day is a reader-supported online publication covering Austin FC. Additional support is provided by Austin Telco Federal Credit Union. You can comment here if you’re a subscriber, or reach out via Bluesky.
As it turns out, the first signing of the Austin FC 2025 summer transfer window was committed all the way back in January.
Nicky Beloko, the Swiss-Cameroonian midfielder who most recently played for FC Luzern in the Swiss Super League, was officially announced on Monday as the latest Austin FC player, but signed a pre-contract back in January, and has been preparing to play in MLS for longer than we previously knew.
While he won't be able to officially appear for the club until the summer transfer window opens July 24 — meaning he'd first be available for the July 26 match at D.C. United – the club's press release noted he can begin training with the club on Tuesday morning and already has his P-1 Visa secured, meaning it's a safe bet that he was in Austin when he recorded this "hello, guys" video (or, at least, when the club released it on Monday afternoon).
By now, you've likely heard about the jersey release party in February — the one where Austin FC sporting director Rodolfo Borrell cavalierly let me know Myrto Uzuni was just days away from arriving in Austin to quell speculation.
There, he also let a fan know that a new player was coming, of a nationality (or, as it turns out, two nationalities) requiring that fan to add a flag patch to his vest of flag patches celebrating the nations of past and present Verde signings. Fans dialed in spent part of Monday connecting dots to realize Beloko was that player.
From what limited information we have about him — as the Swiss Super League isn't especially well tracked by world football data collectors – we know the following:
If you haven't seen him in action yet, here's some video from 2023-24 that shows him in action, starting with him showing off his crossbar challenge skills with a shot from distance. (What does it say about the highlight reel compilers that the first clip out of the gate is an impressive attempt that nonetheless, based on striking woodwork, doesn't even count as a shot on target?)
What we can also glean about him, based on his Swiss Super League stats alone, is he's not an appreciable source of goals and assists, but based on all this highlight footage — despite one impressively athletic stop of an attack — he's not quite a destroyer defensive midfield type either. He's, in soccer position parlance, an 8.
Specifically, the wild card variety of 8 who does a lot of things reasonably well but not one specific thing emphatically well (like feed attackers key passes or shut down opposition attacks or deftly connect a back four to a front three).
In other words, he might just be a lot like Šabović, Owen Wolff, and Dani Pereira. While all those players possess some slight differences in their games that make them granularly distinctive, they're still largely interchangeable central midfielders playing for a team that's currently scoring 0.75 goals a game.
That brings us to loud vociferous complaining from MLSSoccer.com's Matthew Doyle which I think is actually warranted.
And it also brings me to a recurrent frustration I've had every season, and we're now on the fifth — there's not anyone remotely close to a heliocentric No. 10 on this team who yearns, above all else, to rack up assists.
Pining for a 10
A few weeks ago, we broke from the Verde All Day policy of not getting prematurely excited about a transfer rumor by indulging in the Kervin "Tuti" Andrade rumor. He's a 20-year-old Venezuelan international, currently with Brazilian side Fortaleza, described by The Athletic last year as "a little magician of an attacking midfielder, a one-man through-ball workshop who loves to skip past defenders and also takes a mean free kick."
Keep that in mind when explore Doyle's assessment of Austin in the wake of the team's 2-0 loss to the Sounders on Saturday:
And then, he doubled down in his weekly power rankings (where Austin is unsurprisingly 18th) by saying, "Please god go acquire someone who can pass the damn ball."
While Beloko could turn out to be a serviceable and even solid addition to the squad when all is said done, he also took one of the two remaining senior spots and international spots Verde had on its roster. They're now down to one senior international spot, which because of the Leo Väisänen departure, is likely being saved for a center back. (To briefly acknowledge another rumor, it wouldn't be surprising if that center back is Mickaël Nadé, a Saint-Étienne defender who looks like a Borrell signing and would also give Beloko someone to speak French with.)
While an additional center back would be good, that would take the final senior roster spot for a team that is now relying heavily on ostensibly-do-it-all midfielders that don't generate assists. Owen Wolff co-leads the team with four, but his count is set piece heavy, with Osman Bukari (also with four) generating the most open-play assists from his wing position.
(Four is still not a lot; Andres Dreyer currently leads the league with 14, and Manu García and Philip Zinckernagel lead among midfielders with nine each. By contrast, Pereira has one and Šabović has one, so four is a lot for this team, where Diego Rubio in his 209 minutes has the same 1g/1a total as Uzuni in his 1228 minutes and 10 times the salary[[1]].)
Could someone be out?
It's possible that Andrade is still in the plans, but the plans are reliant on a current midfielder leaving in the summer transfer window. If I were to bet on one candidate, it would be Wolff, who has raised his stock appreciably this season. He's young enough and good enough to conceivably make the move to Europe; Austin would just need to find a suitor meeting his valuation (or field an offer from an interested team), and determine that the money gained could be appreciably reinvested in the roster[[2]].
It's also conceivable that Pereira could move, most likely in a player for GAM move within the league. Given his age and ceiling, Pereira's more likely to entice an MLS team than a European one; I could see him providing midfield depth to a team looking to make a deep playoff run.
Also, the North End Podcast has floated another possibility regarding a midfielder we haven't talked about: Ilie Sánchez, who has gone from captain and opening-day starter to not appearing at all in the most recent match, not starting since May 28 against RSL, and not going a full 90 since the match against the Whitecaps on May 17. They describe a midseason retirement and a move to coaching as having a "non-zero" chance of happening.
That would conceivably leave Austin a little thin at the 6, but that's sort of what Šabović has been (sort of) doing in recent weeks, in a game plan that puts out two or three central midfielders depending on the formation, with Austin FC head coach effectively waving his hands and saying "Do some midfield things."
The concern there, of course, is that's had mixed results. Against the Red Bulls, the team looked decisive and in control thanks in large part to midfield play; against the Sounders, they looked toothless and overwhelmed against a team of players who know their roles and a coach really good at assigning and making clear those roles.
Every transfer window is a Rubik's Cube, and we're currently once again at the stage where the colors are all jumbled. It could just be a couple of moves from getting solved, or it could continue as a jumble of colors by the end of the window. Now that we know quite early it's being worked on, it's time to see if anything unexpected follows what's expected.
[[1]]: If you're looking at guaranteed compensation per the new salary guide out last week — which is different from the base salary listing — Rubio's at $208,000 and Uzuni's on $2.25 million.
[[2]]: Of course, with Wolff still a supplemental player rather than a senior player, it doesn't fix that crucial element of roster building.
Verde All Day is a reader-supported online publication covering Austin FC. Additional support is provided by Austin Telco Federal Credit Union. You can comment here if you’re a subscriber, or reach out via Bluesky.
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