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Union Reportedly on the Verge of Selling Best Player to English Team
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Union left back Kai Wagner is on the verge of a European move. Reported first by Jose Nunez, confirmed by Tom Bogert and others (EDIT – confirmed now by the team) –
It’s probably time for Kai. He’s flirted with European moves in recent years and if he doesn’t go now, at age 28, he’s probably never going to make the switch. He’s been connected in the past to teams like Leeds and Rangers and he’s absolutely good enough for Birmingham and the English Championship. The top-half MLS sides can compete with the likes of QPR, Portsmouth, and the Shieffields, so once Kai gets his fitness back (he’d be transferring in our offseason), he should be able to hack it just fine.
Sky Sports’ Florian Plettenberg is reporting that it’s a 2.3 million Euro transfer fee, so about $2.7 million U.S. dollars. That’s around $8 million total in the transfers of Tai Baribo, Jakob Glesnes, and now Wagner.
From an optics perspective, it looks absolutely ridiculous to sell your leading goal scorer and half your backline after a trophy-winning season. In any other sport, you’d reinforce the core and add to the team in an effort to win more trophies. But the Union are a cheap Moneyball team and their philosophy is to sell players while they still have value, then replenish with young talent that fits a Red Bull system of interchangeable parts. It worked in 2025 and they’re going to keep doing it until it doesn’t work.
Say what you will about the Union, but they have a clear and defined strategy and they’re transparent about it.
If this is it for Wagner, you can make an argument that he’s the best Philadelphia Union player of all time. Ernst Tanner plucked him out of the German third division back in 2019, from a “Wurzburger Kickers” team that nobody had ever heard of. Kai went on to make more than 250 appearances for the club while bagging 50+ assists. He’s the franchise assist leader as a fullback, and was Major League Soccer’s best left back for a half-decade. Nobody was more consistent and reliable, and he was rewarded for it with three All-Star nods and two appearances in the MLS Best XI.
He’s a Ring of Honor-caliber player, but the 2023 suspension for using a racial slur probably disqualifies him. I’m not sure you can just sweep that under the rug and act like it never happened. Regardless, he’s been a key part of the best Union teams ever, a big reason why this franchise won two Shields in six years and went to MLS Cup in 2022. No doubt he’ll do well in England. And funny enough, Birmingham is a blue-collar, industrial city like Philly, so swapping Chester for the Midlands is like swapping Cheerios for “Toasted Oats.”
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com