Medford’s Paxten Aaronson returns to MLS, joining the Colorado Rapids

The Union will get a piece of the team-record $8 million transfer fee Colorado paid to sign Aaronson from Eintracht Frankfurt, 10 months before a World Cup he hopes to play in.

Paxten Aaronson (center) played one of his last games for Eintracht Frankfurt when the German club visited the Union for an exhibition earlier this month.Read moreElizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer

by Jonathan Tannenwald

Published Aug. 20, 2025, 3:54 p.m. ET

Medford native Paxten Aaronson is making a surprising move back to Major League Soccer, joining the Colorado Rapids from Germany’s Eintracht Frankfurt.

Multiple sources with knowledge of the deal told The Inquirer that Colorado agreed to a transfer fee of just over $8 million, plus $1.7 million based on performance incentives. It’s a big sum to pay for the 21-year-old, by the standards of Americans coming to MLS and the standards of what’s often been one of the league’s cheapest teams.

Aaronson grew up in the Union’s youth academy and turned pro with the club in 2021. While he played just 41 games in two years here — and just 1,208 minutes across them — his potential was so great that Eintracht began scouting him long before making a formal offer in 2022.

That offer led to a deal after the 2022 season, when Aaronson was part of the squad that reached the only MLS Cup final in Union history. Eintracht agreed to pay $4 million up front and much more based on performance incentives, enough to double the initial check.

Though most of those incentives won’t now be hit, the deal also included a sell-on fee to give the Union a piece of the next move. It is understood to be 20% of the difference between the initial $4 million and the Rapids’ $8 million. That’s not what was reported at the time of the deal, but the Union likely has netted just under $1 million out of all of this — less than hoped for, but not small.

In Aaronson’s 2½ years on Eintracht’s books, he played just 23 games for the club’s first team. He spent 1½ of those years away on loans: at Dutch club Vitesse Arnhem for the second half of the 2023-24 European season, and all of the 2024-25 campaign at Dutch club FC Utrecht.

Aaronson scored four goals in 14 games for Vitesse, which helped him earn a spot on last year’s U.S. Olympic team (an under-23 squad). He then had nine goals and six assists in 37 games for Utrecht, which helped him make this summer’s Gold Cup with the U.S. senior team.

He didn’t play much in the tournament or the two friendlies before it. But there nonetheless were hopes that he’d stick in Frankfurt for the new Bundesliga season, which kicks off this weekend.

The move was Aaronson’s idea

“We are very happy to have him back,” Eintracht manager Dino Toppmöller said when the club came to Philadelphia at the start of the month for a preseason exhibition against the Union. “We are a team who wants to compete in all the competitions, and therefore, we need this size of squad, and he is an important part of it.”

And as Aaronson said at the time: “You mentioned the sprint for the World Cup team — I think if I want to have a good chance of getting on that, I don’t think there’s any better club to be a part of than here at Eintracht. I think when you look at how they’ve done, business-wise, in terms of developing young players, that’s one thing that attracted me when I first came to the club.”

From all indications, Eintracht wanted to keep Aaronson, with this season’s busy calendar including the Champions League. But he still faced an uphill battle for playing time in midfield, so he became open to a move.

Suitors in Europe included Southampton of England’s second division, which is fighting to get back to the Premier League after relegation last spring; and Austria’s Red Bull Salzburg, the former home of Paxten’s older brother, Brenden. He’s now at Leeds United in England’s Premier League and has indicated he wants to stay there and fight for playing time.

Colorado’s offer ended up too good to refuse. Along with the big transfer fee, Aaronson will be a big name on a squad that now has a track record of bringing players home who didn’t quite make it abroad.

That list is headlined by Downingtown native Zack Steffen, who moved there after 4½ underwhelming years on the books of England’s Manchester City. Left back Sam Vines and midfielder Cole Bassett came up in the Rapids’ system, went abroad, and returned there.

Most recently, attacking midfielder Djordje Mihailovic spent a year and a half in the Denver suburbs before landing an $8 million move to Toronto FC this summer. That cash likely helped fuel the Rapids’ push for Aaronson. His purchase price is more than double the team’s previous record, $3.5 million for forward Rafael Navarro last year.

(It bears saying that for all the club’s history of cheapness, its owner is one of the world’s wealthiest people. Stan Kroenke also owns the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, the English Premier League’s Arsenal, the NBA’s Denver Nuggets, and the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche.)

A big gamble before the World Cup

Aaronson also likely will be paid quite well as a Designated Player on Colorado’s books. Specific details about that won’t be public until the MLS Players Association releases them later in the year, but transfer news website GiveMeSport put the DP detail out there Wednesday morning.

That implies a healthy salary, along with the comforts of living in the U.S. Aaronson was attracted to all of that and was en route to Denver on Wednesday to finish the deal.

The big questions now are whether Aaronson can elevate a team that’s currently sixth in the Western Conference (10-11-6, 36 points), 16 points back of first-place San Diego FC; and whether doing so will elevate his stock with U.S. manager Mauricio Pochettino leading up to the World Cup.

The second question is wide-open, with so much about the team unsettled. Pochettino has shown he’s willing to call in players from MLS to compete with the program’s Europe-based stars, but few of them have made a big enough impression to truly overtake a big name.

Aaronson undoubtedly will play a lot for the Rapids, just as goalkeeper Matt Turner will for the New England Revolution side he rejoined this month after three disappointing years in Europe. It’s a big gamble, though, and the only time we’ll know if it pays off is next June.

And if that happens, could he earn a move back to Europe? Perhaps, but such trajectories have been rare over the years. That question might really take a long time to answer.