A select few MLS journeymen have seen the league grow, and experienced its triumphs and struggles in the process
Thierry Henry always seemed to be on his phone. At least, that’s what Atlanta United midfielder Dax McCarty noticed when they played together with New York Red Bulls from 2011-2014, McCarty watching one of the game’s greats thrive in MLS.
Henry was such a recognized face in world football, and susceptible to mass attention in public. So, to create a cocoon of privacy, every time the Red Bulls were in public spaces, such as walking through a major airport, Henry would pull out his phone and spend the entire check-in process – from arriving at the curb to the second he got on the plane – talking.
That’s just one of many stories that McCarty and other MLS journeymen recall. These days it’s a glittery affair. Teams take chartered flights, play in front of tens of thousands of fans, and have all of their games streamed globally thanks to an Apple TV deal worth billions.
But 20 years ago, this was a vastly different setup, one of stodgy training pitches and unrecognized European veterans. Through it all, a select group of journeymen have survived, bouncing from club to club, city to city, and growing alongside a league that is still expanding. GOAL spoke to three MLS veterans who played for a combined 23 teams, and have tallied more than 1,000 appearances.
There's McCarty, a 19-year veteran. There's Eric Miller, who has played for six teams. And of course there's Kei Kamara, now of LAFC, who through trades and signings boasts perhaps the most extensive travelogue of any player in MLS, having worn the jerseys of 11 different clubs over his 20 years in the league. He is the journeyman of all journeymen, and, like no other, has seen MLS from all of its viewpoints, bouncing across the U.S. and Canada.
His North American tour makes for remarkable reading. In order, Kamara has played for Columbus, San Jose, Houston, Kansas City, Columbus (again), New England, Vancouver, Colorado, Minnesota, Montreal, Chicago and Los Angeles.
And the common thread among these MLS journeymen? Their passion for the game.
"I would much rather be a guy that has been around a long time, that's maybe played for a couple different teams and seen a bunch of different cities in this league than a guy who didn't make it as long," McCarty told GOAL. "That's the dream."
Getty ImagesChange is a constant
McCarty has been along for much of the MLS ride. A talented prospect when drafted in 2006, the Atlanta United midfielder has played for 19 years. He is perhaps the definition of the career journeyman, a box-to-box player who had adapted his game, and managed to find a spot at six different clubs. He has never won MLS Cup, but has seen far more of the league – and has more stories to tell – than some of the biggest stars to grace American soccer.
“It felt pretty amateurish when I got to the league,” he says. “I mean, look not to – I don't use that word as a derogatory word. It's just kind of, you know, it's just the reality of what MLS was.”
It is an odd thing to be dubbed an MLS veteran. After all, the league has only been around for 30 years. There are admittedly few players around from the mid 2000s – arguably the period in which the MLS began to take off. The turning point for it all? McCarty highlighted a key moment.
“We signed a World Cup winner in Denilson,” McCarty, then of FC Dallas, said. “That barely scratched the surface of interest. And so when (David) Beckham arrived, there was a massive mania around that.”
But there are other memories, too, some that might paint a less favorable picture of MLS.
“San Jose’s locker room was essentially connected to their basketball gym,” he recalls, “and you had to walk this winding walk through a bunch of different people and a bunch of different fans and a bunch of different fields just to go warm up and just to play, to get ready for the game.”
AdvertisementGettyGetting recognized
It never failed to surprise McCarty just how infrequently he and his MLS teammates were identified by fans – despite wearing team tracksuits. It would happen at airports, or walking around cities – or more accurately, it wouldn’t happen, badges of professional sports franchises going unrecognized.
For McCarty, it served as a perfect excuse for some casual banter – especially on flights (MLS teams flew commercially until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020).
“Back in the day, at the time, we just started making sh*t up,” he says. “We were just like, ‘We're a marching band.’ Or ‘We play basketball, but we play against the Harlem Globetrotters.’ We just made anything up that we could because we were just sick of the questions.”
And it wasn’t just the American-born MLS vets who managed to live in relative anonymity. Big names, such as World Cup winning midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger, was in on all of the jokes.
“You’re trying to sleep or something, and he would strike up some sort of good vibe with the flight attendant, and they would let him get on the PA system and make an announcement to the entire plane,” McCarty said. “He did that once or twice, and everyone was just like, ‘How is this guy doing this right now?’ The flight attendants, maybe they knew who he was. Maybe they didn't.”
European superstars
The influx of European players into MLS started with Beckham’s arrival to the LA Galaxy in 2007, and has steadily continued ever since. But when the England superstar first arrived in MLS, there was admitted skepticism as to how seriously he would take the league. After all, here was a Champions League, LaLiga and Premier League winner, moving to Los Angeles. This could be a vacation.
But McCarty, then early in his MLS career, remembers the exact opposite. Beckham was here to play.
“When Beckham first came to play us in Dallas – I believe it was a day game, sell out crowd, national TV game – and one of my teammates, a Canadian guy, he was a little bit of an enforcer. His name was Adrian Serioux. He gave Beckham a tackle that I don’t think he will soon forget. It was borderline assault, and he got red-carded,” McCarty recalled. “[Beckham] popped right back up and got in the guy’s face… You could tell in that moment that he cared.”
The same goes for Didier Drogba. Miller, now of the Portland Timbers, who has played for six teams over the course of 10 years in the league, spent a handful of months with the Chelsea great.
It was August 2015, and Drogba had just joined Montreal. Registration issues meant the Ivorian couldn’t play in his first game, but he watched from the stands as the Impact turned in a miserable first half showing against D.C. United. Most players would take in all 90 minutes, but Drogba, still less than three weeks into his Montreal tenure, walked into the dressing room at half time.
And he yelled.
“He came down at halftime and was having a go at everyone,” Miller said. “He's like, ‘Guys I came here to win. I came here to make it to the playoffs. This is completely unacceptable… When I start playing, we're not going to be doing this anymore, we're going to win games, we're going to try to make it and win MLS Cup.’ It was so inspiring.”
AFPGetting traded
But there are also the harsher realities of bouncing from team to team. Most of the time, it’s after a player has been traded. Miller, who has been traded three times, and then selected by Nashville in an expansion draft, knows the challenges of relocation all too well.
Sometimes, it happens under admittedly funny circumstances, Miller revealed. The defender received a call from Montreal’s GM briefly before a scheduled preseason trip – and knew that a move was imminent.
But the setting for the news wasn’t standard.
“It was Valentine's Day, and so me and the GM met up in this very beautiful French Cafe in Montreal,” he said. “There's all these couples having these, very romantic lunches, a roses and candy thing. It's just kind of like, maybe this wasn't the best place for this.”
There have also been more hectic moves – ones that required uprooting family. Miller was delighted to sign for Portland as a free agent in February 2023, but did so when his wife was 36 weeks pregnant. He was still unpacking and buying groceries when his wife was induced and gave birth – less than four days after they had hurriedly moved from Nashville. A bassinet was built with 48 hours to spare.
“It was a wild one,” Miller admitted.
While it all can seem like a blur at times, like his fellow journeymen, Kamara says he’s adjusted, and that MLS “just feels like a part of me now, a part of my life, whether or not you’re winning or playing a lot of games.”
That doesn’t mean the itinerant lifestyle of a MLS journeyman doesn’t come with challenges, especially on the family front.
“It came to a point when it was tiring for the kids because they kept losing friends from school, and then make new friends again and again and again. So I had to keep up, but it’s really hard to move with the family,” Kamara said of his travels across the league.