Union

I Support the Philadelphia Union’s Strategy of Bringing Back All the Good Players They Previously Sold to Europe

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Aug 18th, 2026 · 11:15 AM EDT

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Union news:

💣🇺🇸 BREAKING: The Philadelphia Union are finalizing a deal to sign USMNT center back Mark McKenzie from FC Toulouse in January, per sources.

– Fee around $2.5m. McKenzie will be a DP
– Toulouse made clear no summer departure, so move for January agreed
– McKenzie, 27, returns…

— Tom Bogert (@tombogert) August 18, 2026

McKenzie is a Union academy product out of Delaware. He was a starter on the 2020 team that won the Supporters’ Shield, which earned him a winter transfer to Belgian club KRC Genk. After a few seasons there, he moved to French side Toulouse and became a regular figure with the United States national team, making the recent World Cup squad and playing in the group stage game against Turkiye.

The Union have been a developing and selling team ever since Ernst Tanner came to town in 2018, when the academy really started cranking out talent. Guys like Brenden Aaronson played a couple of seasons here and then moved on to bigger and better things while the Union took the transfer money and reinvested it. Rinse and repeat en route to reaching the top and falling just short (MLS Cup 2022, Leagues Cup semifinals, CCL semifinals, etc.)

But now Tanner is gone, and some of these guys are a little older and have played for a bit overseas and the thought of coming back is certainly in play. Look no further than Kai Wagner, who was sold to Birmingham in the winter, played half a season there, and decided that he was going to come right back to Philadelphia instead of continuing in bucolic England. Now you’ve got McKenzie ready to come home at age 27. Maybe they should put in some phone calls to Damion Lowe and Auston Trusty and Brujo Martinez and let’s get the whole band back together.

Of course, you could say, “why sell these guys in the first place?… why not just keep them here to build a really good team?” It is certainly a fair question. At some point the goal is to have MLS be the endpoint, not a stop along the way. You want to have the best players here, making the most money. We’re not there yet, but the page has to turn at some arbitrary point in time, and maybe that’s sooner rather than later. If nothing else, at least we have some evidence now that coming back to Philadelphia after previously playing for the U is path of viability.