While the world of MLS spent the World Cup break debating Robert Lewandowski’s impending impact for the Chicago Fire, or waiting with bated breath for Inter Miami’s announcement of Casemiro, we should highlight a transfer which has been less covered, but is no less exciting.  

Today we’re taking the road less travelled (at least by anything that isn’t NASCAR), all the way to Charlotte, North Carolina. Before we get to Charlotte FC’s newest star forward Allan Saint-Maximin, we need to talk about the club he’s joining, and they deserve more spotlight than they have received in their infancy.

We’re still at the early years of Charlotte’s journey, with the club only beginning play in 2022. As the league’s 28th club, they started with a bang that nobody who was there will forget. Their inaugural home game drew nearly 75,000 fans to Bank of America Stadium, an MLS record at the time, and the club finished second in average attendance league-wide for three consecutive seasons. 

The early years were noisy but inconsistent. Two coaches came and went before Dean Smith arrived in December 2023, the third manager in their history, tasked with turning local buzz and potential into something more durable.  

Charlotte’s progress under Smith has been measurable. After finishing ninth in each of their first two seasons with 42 and 43 points respectively, they climbed to sixth in his first full campaign before recording a club-best fourth-place finish of 59 points in 2025. The Dean Smith impact is obvious, what isn’t is the journey he’s been on to get here.  

Those familiar with the English Premier League and Championship will know Dean Smith as a highly regarded manager, who was crucial in helping establish Brentford as one of English football’s best-run clubs before returning Aston Villa to the Premier League after a three-year absence. Both of those appointments saw Smith manage almost 150 games at each club and were by far the most successful of his career.  

Prior to joining Charlotte FC, Smith had two significantly uncharacteristic and underwhelming appointments with Premier League sides Norwich City and Leicester City. The real surprise with these appointments wasn’t the short nature or the poor run of form, it was that both clubs were already battling relegation at the bottom of the table.  

In leagues with relegation, and certainly in England, these managers are known as firefighters, brought in to claw clubs out of the relegation zone and back into safer surroundings. For those that are interested I implore you to look into the history of these managers. Despite generally not being the most glamorous, they take on a cult hero status within clubs and leagues where they are successful. 

Dean Smith simply isn’t that kind of manager and was not successful in either of his relegation battles. He left England with a slightly tarnished managerial record, despite being an established and successful premier league manager. People love to claim that Leo Messi couldn’t do it on a rainy night in Stoke, and while it’s nonsense, I genuinely don’t think Pep Guardiola could do the job for a relegation battling Norwich. I personally think Charlotte FC can be happy that they have managed to attract a quality manager even if it was at a low point in his career.  

While we’re discussing cult-heroes, I couldn’t go on without acknowledging the Leicester City and Austria legend that is Christian Fuchs. Fuchs was part of the 2015-16 Leicester team that miraculously won the Premier League despite being tipped for relegation. The 5000-1 odds are often thrown around as one of the most incredible sporting moments of all time. Fuchs ended his playing career with Charlotte FC, captaining the side for their inaugural season before retiring and joining as an assistant coach. It was only late 2025 when he stepped away to take a coaching role in England.  

All of this is leading up to my favourite fact about Charlotte FC, and no it isn’t Sir Minty the mascot. I’m talking about the pre-match ritual of locking arms with the fans beside you and jumping up and down with your back to the field. In Charlotte it’s done to the tune of ‘Pepas’, a song by the Puerto Rican artist Farruko. Many readers will probably recognize it as the Poznań, a supporters celebration used initially by Polish side Lech Poznań, but since adopted by others, most notably Manchester City. On second thought Sir Minty comes close, but maybe that’s just because of my roots to the red side of Manchester.  

Despite my English heritage, I’m not the most eager royalist, however I’m already incredibly tempted to join ‘The Royal Family’ of Charlotte’s supporter groups.  Finally, lets get to the exciting bit, and there’s nothing more exciting than a shiny marquee signing.  Enter Allan Saint-Maximin.  

Wilfried Zaha spent the first half of 2026 at Charlotte on loan from Galatasaray, providing the kind of experienced, physical, unpredictable attacking threat that changes games. He departed in May, and the obvious question was whether Charlotte would be able to replace that kind of influence. There are some sizable boots to fill, but I genuinely can’t think of a player who more closely fits the style of the talented Ivorian.  

The 29-year-old is a different proposition to Zaha. More pace-reliant, more flair-focused, perhaps less physically imposing. But what the two players share is the capacity to make something out of nothing in tight spaces, to beat a defender when nothing else is working, and to give a crowd a reason to hold their breath every time they receive the ball. In a league that rewards entertainers, he is among the most entertaining players not currently in it. 

Newcastle supporters didn’t love Saint-Maximin because he scored thirty goals a season. They loved him because every time he picked the ball up, something might happen. In as sport that has become increasingly obsessed with efficiency, Saint-Maximin has always preferred chaos.  

His career-arc since hitting the big time on Tyneside with Newcastle United, where he spent four seasons and became one of the club’s most beloved players, has been a winding one. It was followed up by a brief spell in Saudi Arabia before moves to Fenerbahçe, Club América and then RC Lens where he helped the club win the first Coupe de France title in its 120-year history. 

Now he arrives in MLS with Charlotte FC, but if his words are anything to go by, he’s here to stay. “I really want to create a legacy here,” he said on signing. “That’s why I didn’t stay or make the decision to go with another club, because this club afforded me the opportunity to become a legend. That’s exactly what I want, and it’s exactly what I know I’m capable of doing.” 

Ambitions of a club legend before hitting the pitch for your new club is lofty, but is music to the Charlotte fan ears. At Charlotte, under Smith, is a structured environment built for him to express himself, I can’t imagine why Saint-Maximin couldn’t take up and even surpass Zaha’s legacy. At the very least I don’t expect him to pick up as many yellow cards.  

MLS in 2026 is a league of two narratives. There is the galáctico aspect: big names, big wages, big expectations, Inter Miami being the obvious example but hardly the only one. And there is the coherent project, a club built on structure, identity, and incremental improvement that quietly becomes harder to beat without making the front pages. 

Charlotte is the second type. They are not the biggest club in MLS, they are not the most famous. Their attendance has leveled off after the initial wave of enthusiasm, and they are managing that challenge alongside the obstacles on the pitch.

But they have a manager who knows what he is doing and they have a recruitment model that has consistently found players who fit what Smith needs rather than simply chasing names. And they have just signed one of football’s most entertaining players, a man who said publicly that he wants to become a legend, at an age where he still has enough left to mean it. 

Charlotte probably will not win the MLS Cup this year. The Eastern Conference is competitive and the margin for error in a condensed second half of the season is razor thin. 

But do not be surprised if, come the autumn, when the playoff picture sharpens and the league’s attention finally turns toward a club that has been quietly doing the right things for two years, Charlotte FC are exactly where they have been building toward all along. The headlines may belong elsewhere, but my attention won’t.