Transfer drama never ends, even outside of the official transfer window. As Atlanta United excitedly announces that Giakoumakis has finished the process of getting his visa, meaning that he will in fact be ready for the Toronto game there are other transfer talks going down, as well. These are over Miles Robinson's future and Thiago Almada's potential transfer out of the MLS.
Starting with the more real news, Miles Robinson has reportedly declined to sign a contract extension with Atlanta United as the team wants to extend the U.S. international all the way through 2027. Robinson reportedly wants to allow his contract to expire this winter and move on to a different team. This sparks a couple of different judgement calls. Is this just Miles having a good agent who is trying to get the best contract possible? Is Atlanta United going to try to sell their ex-captain in the summer, rather than letting his contract run out? And are there teams that want Robinson bad enough to buy his contract from Atlanta United in the summer, rather than just wait until the winter?
There are no official answers to any of these questions although some inferences can be made. From my perspective I doubt Miles Robinson will be able to attract significant enough interest for any team to pay to sign him in the summer, considering his career altering injury last year. This means that I predict that either this is his agent playing hard ball and he will resign soon or he is moving on this winter.
Looking prospectively at one of MLS's newest superstars what is in Thiago Almada's future? If he continues playing anything like he did against San Jose he is definitely leaving in the summer, especially because as a young prospect for top European clubs many teams are more willing to make riskier signings between seasons, rather than in the middle of the season where they are typically looking more short term to patch any holes and upgrade any positions that are a little lacking. This then leads me to wondering where Almada might go. The three front runners in my mind are Chelsea as they have shown they are more than willing to drop million of dollars on players, even relatively untested ones, Paris Saint Germain as they are another club willing to spend money and currently have Messi who has said that he liked playing with Almada on the Argentine National Team, they are even having disputes with Neymar, and lastly to be far more realistic-but still crazy- Fulham have had a tremendous season this year and will probably be looking to bring in reinforcements. All of this is just speculation, but still fun to think about.