The countdown to Julián Carranza’s departure from the Union draws nearer, and it has to

Carranza has to leave if he wants to play in the 2026 World Cup, and Jim Curtin isn't afraid to say it: "It’s more likely him doing that if he’s playing in Europe right now than MLS.”

Julián Carranza runs with the ball during the Union's scoreless tie at Charlotte FC on SaturdayRead morePhiladelphia Union

by Jonathan Tannenwald

Published May 26, 2024, 12:06 p.m. ET

There wasn’t much to talk about from the Union’s scoreless tie in Charlotte on Saturday, but there was plenty to talk about beyond the field.

Earlier in the day, reports emerged in the Netherlands and the U.S. that Union striker Julián Carranza is in talks to join Dutch club Feyenoord when his contract ends after this year. As the European club season ends this month, the transfer rumor season begins, and here we are.

The most intriguing item was this from The Athletic: “Feyenoord’s talks are for a pre-agreement for a winter move. If they reach an agreement, they will seek a summer transfer with Philadelphia.”

That would be a gift for the Union. It doesn’t make much sense for Feyenoord, or any club, to pay in the summer for a player it could have for free a few months later.

Sure, teams like to have their new signings in preseason camp, and Feyenoord will have a new manager after Arne Slot’s departure to succeed famed Jürgen Klopp at Liverpool. But those reasons aren’t enough to spend money unnecessarily.

So why do it? Here’s a guess: It’s because Feyenoord will play in the Champions League next season. That means a front-loaded schedule.

It will also be a big payday for the second-place finisher in this season’s Dutch league. And the club’s coffers already got a boost from Liverpool reportedly paying $14 million to buy Slot out of his contract.

The Champions League schedule is an incentive for Carranza, too. If he leaves in the winter instead of the summer, Feyenoord’s first Champions League run since 2017 could already be over.

More than just money

Union fans who are new to international soccer might frame all of this as the Union not trying hard enough to keep a player who ranks as the team’s No. 3 all-time scorer even though he arrived only two years ago. The Argentine has 43 goals in 95 Union games, including 10 in 15 this year.

It’s not about that, and it won’t be about that no matter what the outcome is. The biggest goal here — and yes, this is where soccer is different from the Eagles and Phillies — isn’t winning a championship for Philadelphia. It’s playing in the World Cup.

If Carranza is to have any chance of making Argentina’s team in 2026, he must go to Europe as soon as possible. He has known it all along, and so have the Union. Now he’s running out of time.

If Carranza goes this year, whether in the winter or summer, there will be enough opportunities to impress Argentina manager Lionel Scaloni — especially on the Champions League’s big stage. And Scaloni will pay attention, because the reigning World Cup champions only have two pure strikers on their depth chart right now.

To be sure, they’re two superstar players: Inter Milan’s Lautaro Martínez and Manchester City’s Julián Álvarez. But the Albiceleste could do with a third, as any team in that situation would. (Not for nothing did U.S. manager Gregg Berhalter bring four strikers to his pre-Copa América training camp that starts this week.)

They know about Carranza’s feats with the Union in Argentina. I learned that firsthand talking with veteran Argentine journalists when the national team played at Lincoln Financial Field in March. Had the Union not been across the country in Portland, Ore., that weekend, you can be sure Carranza would have been talked about even more. Now they’re waiting for him to take the next step.

“He knows in his heart that I want him to go to the absolute highest level,” Union manager Jim Curtin said. “I want to win here with him first, and hopefully it’s to at least the end of this season — I said that publicly, I’ll say that to Julián’s face. But I also recognize this game, and when an opportunity comes and a deal has to be made that benefits him, the club, and everybody, we’ll do that.”

The deepest truth

Then Curtin said something that ought to be nailed to the walls of MLS headquarters.

“Let’s be honest, it’s more likely him doing that if he’s playing in Europe right now than MLS,” Curtin said. “That’s not a knock on our league. Our league is an incredible league, it’s a unique league — it’s a league of choice now for a lot of young Argentines to come here, to develop, and then move on.”

He meant it as a compliment, because it is. And he especially meant what he said next: “Before you can be a top-five league, I think you have to be a selling league.”

That is a truth MLS took far too long to realize, and still hasn’t fully. You don’t become an elite league by signing Lionel Messi and marketing him 10 times more than anyone else. You do it by developing players, selling them to bigger leagues, getting attention for it, and using the cash to buy better imports.

So yes, the Union should do as much as they can to sell Carranza this summer, even if it means losing him for the playoffs. It would hurt a lot, but it would be the best thing for an organization whose ethos is built on developing and selling players.

If Carranza does stay until the end of the year, it wouldn’t do the team a favor, because he’d leave as a free agent for nothing. A deep playoff run might soothe some of the pain, but it would only soothe enough if the Union win it all — and that feels unlikely right now.

The only “favor” Carranza could have done the Union was taking the offers that were on the table last winter, especially from England’s Ipswich town — which just got promoted to the Premier League — or Germany’s Werder Bremen.

‘He’s going to be gone’

What about loyalty to a fan base that loves him? It doesn’t work that way, sorry. Carranza was a hired gun in the first place, signed on loan from Inter Miami when the Herons had to blow up their team as punishment for breaking MLS roster rules. The $500,000 fee the Union paid to turn the loan into a sale is one of the all-time heists in league history.

Fans might be better off investing their energy in appreciating more hired guns. Most players in MLS don’t stick around for all that long. The good young ones get sold, and the good old ones come late in their careers.

The Union have had many of the former so far, and not many of the latter. But the most famous one in team history, Marco Fabián, scored one of the biggest goals in team history: the winner in the team’s first playoff victory in 2019.

Carranza will probably say something about all this in the next few days, and it will probably be what it’s usually been: He isn’t thinking about it. But the Union are, and fans should.

“If he keeps scoring goals, he’s going to be gone,” Curtin said. “That’s the reality of life and pro soccer. And he deserves it, because I love him.”