Despite having two promising young goalkeepers on the roster, the Philadelphia Union officially announced the signing of Algeria World Cup goalkeeper Raïs M'Bohli on Wednesday. The signing had been strongly rumored for several weeks.
Union sign Algerian World Cup goalkeeper Raïs M’Bohli
It remains unclear what the Union plan to do with their two highly drafted goalkeepers.
Matthias Hangst
The 28-year-old goalkeeper most recently played club soccer is Bulgaria with CSKA Sofia, but he's also spent time in the Russian Premier League and in France's Ligue 2. What brought him to some level of prominence, though, was his performance at the most recent World Cup.
Still, the decision to sign M'Bohli is a bit of a curious one. Since drafting Zac MacMath with the No. 5 pick in the 2011 MLS SuperDraft, the Union have been grooming him to be their longterm goalkeeper. But after a couple roller-coaster seasons, the Union made the somewhat surprising decision to trade up to the No. 1 spot in this year's SuperDraft in order to select goalkeeper Andre Blake.
MacMath was able to hold off Blake to retain his starting position and has played reasonably well even though the Union are currently outside of playoff position. MacMath will apparently retain his starting spot for at least another week and head coach Jim Curtain said he'd be in goal on Friday against Sporting Kansas City.
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