Transfer News

Union sign Maurice Edu to permanent deal

Photo: Earl Gardner

The Philadelphia Union have announced the permanent transfer of Maurice Edu from Stoke City.

“I couldn’t be happier to permanently return to Philadelphia and to play in front of our great fans,” said Edu. “I believe in this team’s future and am excited to be an integral part of that.”

Union technical director Chris Albright said, “Mo is an extremely important player to our organization and we’re excited that he will be in Philadelphia for the foreseeable future. We look forward to him helping lead us toward building a winning team.”

Per league and club policy, terms of the deal were not disclosed. Edu’s salary in 2014 was reported at $650,000.

Edu joined the Union from Stoke in January of 2014 on a one-year loan with the option to buy, making 31 appearances in league play, scoring 3 goals and 2 assists over 2789 minutes of play.

The question now is where will Edu play on the field, a question that is complicated by the loss of Amobi Okugo to Orlando City. A natural defensive midfielder, Edu’s move to center back under Jim Curtin was an important part of the Union’s summer surge.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Curtin said, “You guys know what position I played him at in the past. I had an end of the year meeting with him and we discussed where our team had success and where he played, so, you can infer… you can come to a conclusion on that if Mo is the guy we have back.”

Curtin said in November,

I do like him as a center back. I do. And I’ve had discussions — our end-of-the-year meeting was a good one. We talked about his impact in the midfield was good, his impact as a center back was more. You look at the results, we won a lot of games when he played center back. That’s when we did our most damage. It opened his eyes a little bit. I told him, national team picture-wise, he could be a center back in this next World Cup cycle, he’s that talented.

Curtin told MLSsoccer.com soon after, “He’s willing to play center back, for sure.”

News of the deal first broke on Thursday when Philly.com’s Jonathan Tannenwald reported Edu had signed “a new multi-year contract,” one which “required a transfer fee from the Union to Stoke.” The Philly.com report was followed by confirmation of the deal at CSN Philly from Dave Zeitlin, which was itself followed by another confirmation from ESPN.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Alright said, “I think we’re close to being over the line, and look forward to getting that behind us and having Mo be a big piece for us in the foreseeable future.”

4 Comments

  1. All of this is good news. To me, this is the baseline for success in this offseason–keeping the things that worked from last year. And Edu generally worked, especially at CB. If they couldn’t keep him at the very minimum, any hope I had (and I don’t have much anymore) for this team would evaporate.

  2. Old Soccer Coach says:

    Excellent. The first domino has fallen. Let more follow. Might the delay between leaked report and official report be a check clearing?

  3. Good move. Good to get it out of the way and keep a quality player here. He and Valdes are a pretty formidable athletic, strong, smart and experienced CB pair. Let hope the rest of the pieces start fitting into place.
    (Please just no BC at DM)

  4. Thrilled to have this done! Now PLEASE,PLEASE,PLEASE sign a starting quality LB and Name Striker. Mo is an all-star quality CB so the Union need to fill the void left by the unnecessary unloading of Okugo! The Union need an outstanding starting 11, the rest give them depth. Hopefully they’ll find someone to close the talent gap between Le Toux and Cruz!

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