Columbus Crew continues to 'freshen up' roster for second half of MLS season
· Yahoo Sports
The Crew already made a major change this season when coach Henrik Rydstrom was fired and replaced by interim Laurent Courtois in May, but the changes continued during the World Cup break.
On July 3, the Crew sent team-leading scorer Diego Rossi to CF Monterrey for a deal confirmed to be worth up to $8 million.
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With striker Wessam Abou Ali officially moved to the season-ending injury list during the break after suffering a torn ACL on April 12, forward Daniel Gazdag is the only designated player from the beginning of the year available for the second half of the season.
Gazdag joined the Crew from the Philadelphia Union in April 2025, but in Columbus he has scored only one goal and has started seven games in 2026.
MLS roster regulations allow each team to have three designated players, whose salaries and signing costs each can exceed the maximum salary budget of $803,125.
General manager Issa Tall expressed the intent to use the two designated player spots on "attacking-minded" players, and before Rossi's departure was finalized the Crew had used one of the openings to sign La Liga midfielder Brais Mendez.
"The way everything worked out obviously required a lot of work to have the signing, that departure, to be aligned literally by a day apart," Tall said. "But it’s months in the making, it’s months of work, and the fact that it happened, the way it happened was perfect in a way. But it wasn’t anything planned to the tee."
The Crew began heavily scouting Mendez in January, during his fourth season at Real Sociedad.
Mendez finished his nine-year stint in La Liga, recording 33 goals and 24 assists with Real Sociedad, and 22 goals and 17 assists in five seasons with Celta Vigo.
After signing Mendez through the 2028-29 season, the Crew are left with a designated player spot expected to be available only for the rest of the season, as Abou Ali is projected to return and retake the spot before the 2027 season.
"It’s so tricky," Tall said. "His injury did change things, and now the hope is that he does come back for the beginning of next season. So, it’s a puzzle that you have to juggle, where you have to replace the season-ending injury.
"We're talking about the gymnastics of finding someone for the short term, knowing that Wessam will come back later. How hard is this? We’re working on it."
The Crew will have until the end of the MLS summer transfer window on Sept. 2 to sign a final designated player, and any other players they aim to have on the roster for the end of the season.
Lautaro Giaccone, 25, became the first to join Columbus this summer on a loan from Argentinos Juniors on June 29.
For Tall, the goal is to make multiple other moves before the window closes. He acknowledges there are areas beyond the attack that can be strengthened.
"The overall goal is to strengthen our roster and to freshen it up in a way, to bring some new blood," Tall said. "We hope we are able to do this with Brais Mendez. We hope we are able to do this with Lautaro Giaccone as well. ... but we’re not done."
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Crew continues to 'freshen up' roster for second half of MLS season