Charlotte FC's star striker headed to English club

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Four years into this franchise’s existence, Charlotte FC is introducing its fans to another key component of Major League Soccer: developing and cashing in on players.

Charlotte FC and England’s Derby County have agreed in principle to a transfer that would send striker Patrick Agyemang to the English Championship club and net Charlotte $8 million, plus another $2 million in possible bonuses and a sell-on clause which would give Charlotte a percentage of any transfer fee if sold to a future club. The Ledger confirmed the initial report from Tom Bogert of GiveMeSport.com from a source familiar with the negotiations.

Agyemang is a player Charlotte FC plucked in the first round of the 2023 SuperDraft after he’d risen the college ranks from Division III Eastern Connecticut State to Division I Rhode Island. In the last two seasons, he’s breezed through Crown Legacy to make his mark on MLS, where he rendered designated players Enzo Copetti and Karol Swiderski expendable by last season’s end. He led the squad with 10 goals in 31 games [19 starts]. In January, when he was chosen to play for the U.S. Men’s National team, it was clear Agyemang wasn’t just Charlotte’s anymore.

Pending a physical in the days following Sunday’s 7 p.m. Gold Cup final between the U.S. and Mexico, MLS approval and other final details, Agyemang’s departure will become official. Barring something unforeseen, Charlotte FC’s first-ever MLS All-Star won’t play in that game July 23, nor wear the Charlotte FC uniform anymore.

Talk about no closure. No wonder Charlotte fans took to social media after to lament. Wrote one season ticket holder, Mike Kelly Jr. on X: “We are losing our second best player for money and we are not supposed to be [ticked] off?” Many were met with an overriding response of “This is how it works” and commending Charlotte FC for the financial return. “Fleeced ’em” wrote one on X.

Agyemang has said it’s his dream to play in Europe. Now, he will get his chance in the league playing right under the nose of the English Premier League. Charlotte FC, which couldn’t convince Agyemang to sign to a modest extension, is in line to get $8 million-plus for a player it drafted and paid the league minimum of $104,000 a year for two years. For Agyemang, the deal stands to bring him a significant raise. One report suggested his new annual salary would be north of $1 million.

Charlotte FC coach Dean Smith has been saying all along that the club doesn’t want to sell Agyemang, whose raw but dynamic talent is now in the international conversation — but if the price was right, they would.

“We want to keep our better players here, but I said it before: Every player has a price,” Smith said Thursday afternoon before news of the transfer broke. “If the price is right for our club to sell the player, the player wants to go, all those things are met, then things can happen.”

The MLS summer transfer window opens July 24 [and stays open until Aug. 21] and knowing Charlotte FC was negotiating this move, there are conversations underway for what’s next at striker.

When asked about his needs this next window, Smith pointed to Agyemang’s spot as well as left back, where newcomer Souleyman Doumbia just went down with his second, though less serious, hamstring strain.

“At center forward, if Patrick does decide that he wants to leave the club, then we obviously have to be ready to move,” Smith said Thursday afternoon.

Given the deal, Charlotte FC will open the window with more financial flexibility and an open designated player spot to use. In the meantime, 20-year-old Israeli Idan Toklomati is showing what he can do, scoring goals in each of Charlotte FC’s past two games. He had the back-heel finish against Kansas City and the left-footed chip against Chicago to go with the goal he scored earlier against Nashville on April 5 to finish off a vertical pass from Pep Biel.

Runs like he made that game are what excite Smith, who called Toklomati Charlotte’s best player in last Saturday’s 3-2 loss in Chicago.

When asked about his assets Thursday, Smith said: “His understanding of where the goal is and how to go and score goals … His constant running in behind [the opponent’s backline] and the way he makes runs in behind will certainly be good for us.”

After having just five hours to decide if he was willing to come to Charlotte, a city he didn’t know in a country he’d never visited, the Spaniard Pep Biel rolled the dice on Charlotte FC.

Since then, he’s been living with the uncertainty of short-term loans, one late last season since his arrival from Greek club Olympiacos and another through Aug. 1. Charlotte FC just announced this week it had extended Biel’s loan through the end of the 2025 season, this time with a caveat: “A purchase option if certain performance metrics are met.”

If Biel reaches certain statistical milestones — along the lines of games played, games started and goal contributions — that will trigger Charlotte FC’s option to buy his contract from the Olympiacos. That would mean at season’s end, barring injury, Charlotte would likely negotiate to sign Biel to a multi-year deal.

“We want to continue seeing Pep thrive at our Club, which is why we felt it was crucial to keep him throughout the end of the season and potentially for the foreseeable future,” Charlotte FC general manager Zoran Krneta said in the prepared release.

So yeah, “foreseeable future” is not only on the table, but likely, from what Biel said about the performance parameters.

“I think it's easy things [to reach] to extend more years,” Biel said. “So maybe in a couple of weeks, we have more news.”

When asked if he would want to sign on to a multi-year deal, Biel said, “Yeah, I think we both want this,” meaning he and the club.

Biel is leading Charlotte FC in both goal contributions [14] and assists [eight] and is tied with Agyemang for the team lead in goals with six. He’s doing it at the ever-important central attacking midfield role where Charlotte FC had seen a revolving door from Tito Ortiz, to Swiderski at times, to Brecht Dejaegere.

“Pep has become a key piece of the club since returning for his second stint in Charlotte, and you can see the player we saw when we first brought him come alive as he becomes more comfortable within our club and the league,” Krneta said in the release.

The lease on Biel’s uptown apartment goes through December, and now he doesn’t have to break it. For a guy who’s enjoyed offseason visits to cities like Miami, New York and L.A., maybe now he can make that trip to Vegas he’s been contemplating. And why not? His gamble here is paying off.

Charlotte FC finally gets to come home to Bank of America Stadium on Saturday, where it hasn’t played in six weeks, after dropping nine of its past 11 games in MLS play in a brutal road-heavy stretch. But the team will have to go without star winger Wilfried Zaha, who was suspended one game for yellow card accumulation.

Zaha has been booked for yellow cards in three consecutive games and four of the past five. He picked up his sixth caution Saturday in Chicago for delaying a restart by hovering over the ball and then booting it out of play.

“It’s quite ironic that the most fouled player in the league is suspended, isn’t it, for delaying the restart?” Smith said.

The implication is that Zaha, who leads MLS with 68 fouls drawn, has cause for some frustration. He’s on pace to chase the MLS record for fouls drawn in a season of 116 held by Richie Laryea of Toronto. Zaha has five goals and five assists on the season, second in both categories for Charlotte FC.

Without Zaha and Agyemang, Smith said he’s considering moving Biel to the wing as he did in the second half against Chicago and bringing in Djibril Diani in the midfield. Diani came off the bench to set up both goals in the second half of Charlotte’s near-comeback.

When/Where: 7:15 p.m. Saturday, Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte

How to watch: FS1 and FOX Deportes. MLS Season Pass on Apple TV. Find information about how to subscribe for the season here.

How to listen: WFNZ 92.7 in English, WOLS 106.1 in Spanish.

Notable:

Carroll Walton is a longtime baseball writer with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution now in her fourth season covering Charlotte FC. She would love to hear from you. E-mail her with questions, suggestions, story ideas and comments!

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