With forward Sang Bin Jeong’s trade to St. Louis City all but official last week, Minnesota United players said goodbye to their South Korean teammate before a training session Friday.
The Loons presented him with flowers, a pair of jerseys — one handed over by Bongokuhle Hlongwane, Jeong’s best buddy in Minnesota — and a whole lineup of team hugs.
“I want to thank Sang Bin for being a fantastic person who we will miss,” Minnesota chief soccer officer Khaled El-Ahmad said in a press release. “He has forever made friends here at MNUFC.”
All that’s left to console the Loons are the memories — and the pile of cash they received in return.
It was the first time Minnesota took advantage of what MLS is calling a “cash for player” trade — what most of the soccer world would simply call a sale. This is the first season that MLS teams could trade plain old money, rather than “general allocation money” (basically, salary cap space), for players.
The Loons are getting $1.6 million for Jeong, plus up to $400,000 more if he reaches performance incentives. It’s an impressive return for a player who had more or less fallen out of the team’s short-term plans.
As a comparison, Philadelphia traded 21-year-old creative midfielder Jack McGlynn, a full U.S. international, to Houston for $2.1 million (plus up to $1.3 million in incentives), with both teams retaining a percentage of any future sale of the player.
In his third season in MLS, Jeong had been relegated to late-substitute duty, making only two starts in league games — both in which the Loons were playing a less-than-full-strength team overall. No goals and no assists in 15 appearances in 2025 was not the return he and the team were seeking.
