USL League One Pre-Season News Roundup
The biggest stories around the southeast this off-season.
Pre-season is in full swing, and our southeastern USL League One teams have been making some moves. Well, some more than others. Read up to see our take on everything the teams have done (or haven’t done yet) in the lead-up to the 2025 season.
FC Naples’ Roster Building
Image credit South Georgia Tormenta/Caroline Boykin
With five new clubs joining the league this season, there have been some opportunities for league veterans to move around, and in at least FC Naples’ case, have a pretty outstanding change of scenery.
Players are coming in from places like Windsor, CO (Lalo Delgado, Brecc Evans), Statesboro, GA (Jake Dengler), Fresno, CA (Chris Heckenberg), Huntsville, AL (Tyler Pasnik) and Lexington, KY (Jayden Onen). No offense to those locations and their residents (I’m sure they have their charms), but a move from any of those cities to Naples, FL, with housing paid? I’m sure it’s a huge draw.
Naples has opted to fill in much of the rest of the roster with first-time or recently turned professionals, along with a few moves from overseas and one player each from NISA, USL Championship and MLS NextPro. It’s a good start, with a solid core of experienced players. We’re especially big on the defense, with Dengler, Evans and Heckenberg, along with Ian Garrett, Max Glasser and Kevin O’Connor. They’re backed by one of the best keepers in the league, Delgado, himself backed by Puerto Rican National Team keeper Joel Serrano.
Greenville Looks to Continue Tradition of Winning
Image credit Greenville Triumph/Kevin Garcia
As a founding member of USL League One, Greenville has made the playoffs in every single year of its existence. With the 2025 roster we’ve seen so far, this season should not be any different.
The team made up for the loss of Golden Boot winner Lyam MacKinnon by bringing in two of Chattanooga’s top goal scorers, Chevone Marsh and Ropapa Mensah. They’re joined by 24 year old Michael Gonzalez, fresh off his first pro season with Monterey Bay, and still-promising second year pros Rodrigo Robles and Ben Zakowski. Rounding it all out is long time pro Leo Castro, who was second to MacKinnon in goals in 2024. Seems like a decent plan to make up for the loss of MacKinnon’s goals.
Sebastian Velasquez returns in the midfield, along with fellow veterans Carlos Anguiano and Chappa Herrera. The defense is also set with the return of Brandon Fricke, Evan Lee and Tyler Polak, and the additions of Zane Bubb (Tampa Bay) and Anthony Patti (Lexington). Gunther Rankenburg returns as the number one goaltender.
Unless there’s some remarkable loss of production across the entire roster, this should be the seventh year of playoffs in Greenville.
Chattanooga Red Wolves’ Gamble
Image credit Chattanooga Red Wolves
This club has been awfully quiet through the off-season, and even into pre-season. We’re told there was a shakeup in the front office, with our media contacts moving on to bigger and better opportunities.
In any case, the club’s social accounts finally sprang to life last week with the announcement of ten returning players and six newcomers.
Out: top goal-scorers and playmakers Mayele Malango, Chevone Marsh, Ropapa Mensah and Stefan Lukic, who represent a whopping 22 of 28 goals scored in the regular season.
In: Matt Bentley, who we felt deserved another shot after a down year in Richmond in 2023. The winger went on to Maidstone of the National League South, where he scored three and provided two assists in 19 matches.
They also brought in promising 21 year old centerback Eric Kinzner, who started his professional career with Tacoma Defiance in its USL Championship days. This incuded a loan to then USL League One side FC Tucson before moving up to Rio Grande Valley for a season, followed by a season with St. Louis City 2.
Other newcomers include midfielder Joshua Ramos, who spent 2024 with South Georgia Tormenta; and three first-time professionals, striker Greyson Mercer, midfielder Wynand Wessels and goalkeeper Jason Smith.
Returning: Kinzner will play alongside Declan Watters, who, despite the team’s poor season in 2024, was statistically one of the best defenders in the league. The club also returned promising playmaking midfielder Jonathan Filipe who suffered a season-ending injury in just the first match of the 2024 season, following a spectacular run with the team while on loan in the last part of the 2023 season.
Owen Green, Omar Hernández, Pedro Hernandez, Toby Jnohope, Michael Knapp, Gharret Morris and Ualefi also return. It’s Ualefi’s seventh season with the club, one of only three players in the league to remain with the same side since the league started in 2019.
It’s a big gamble, but at worst, there’s a lot of potential for player development with potentials for transfers. Multiple team owners are encouraging this as a path to league sustainability, as opposed to spending more on a team full of veterans. We’ll see how it works out in a league where plenty of teams are still spending on a lot of talented veterans.
South Georgia Tormenta Makes a Splash
Image credit Charlotte Independence
When Charlotte Independence announced its off-season departures, star goalkeeper Austin Pack was among them. For two seasons, the 30 year old has been one of the best in the league, and a reliable presence in net, starting almost every match. He won the league’s Goalkeeper of the Year award in 2023, with 18 clean sheets across league competitions in both seasons.
It was speculated that Pack would be returning to USL Championship, but suddenly South Georgia Tormenta announced him as their first new 2025 signing.
Tormenta also added several USL Championship veterans, including Gabriel Alves from Rhode Island FC, Handwalla Bwana from Charleston Battery and Jackson Kasanzu, last with San Diego Loyal. While the latter two are certainly second-chance cases due to injury recovery for Bwana and the lack of a team last season for Kasanzu, they still bring a wealth of prior experience. Bwana spent time with MLS side Seattle Sounders, and that final San Diego team was one of the best in the league in 2023.
They also brought back defensive midfielder Gabriel Cabral, who was part of the 2022 title winning squad, and spent the last two seasons with Miami FC.
Tormenta also hit up MLS NextPro’s free agent class, bringing in centerback Thabo Nare from LAFC2 and Jonathan Nyandjo from Crown Legacy.
Finally, Tormenta raided three top players not re-signed by independent MLS NextPro club Chattanooga FC, including winger Taylor Gray, left back Joseph Perez and centerback Anatolie Prepelita.
Image credit South Georgia Tormenta/Caroline Boykin
Returning player include 2024’s lead goal-scorer Sebastian Vivas, midfielders Conor Doyle, Callum Stretch, Mason Tunbridge and Aaron Walker, along with backup goalkeeper Sam Jones.
There’s a lot of potential here, and while it didn’t work the last two seasons, we’ve seen head coach Ian Cameron find success with a bunch of new players before.
Charlotte and Knoxville: Where are the new Signings?
Image credit Richard Hayes/RVAHub
Charlotte announced a batch of departing players, and has been rolling out its return announcements at a slow pace of 2-3 a week. They’ve yet to announce any newcomers, despite losing some pretty big names to free agency.
Out: Golden Boot runner up J.C. Obregón (Westchester), midfielder Miguel Ibarra (AV Alta), defender/midfielder Joel Johnson (Westchester), star goalkeeper Austin Pack (Tormenta); in addition, 2024 late addition Dustin Correa signed in Nicauagura, winger Tresor Mbuyu is a free agent and Kharlton Belmar retired.
Returners include Omar Ciss, Clay Dimick, Rayan Djedje, Nathan Gray, Matt Levy, Bachir Ndiaye, Fabrice Ngah, Anton Sorenson and Nick Spielman. Star midfielder and Young Player of the Year Luis Álvarez is also expected to return, at least for the first part of the season, per his agent. The 22 year old had been slated for a fee transfer to Spanish side AD Alcorcón, but the deal collapsed before the Spanish league deadline.
One notable unknown is Gabriel Obertan, the long-time professional veteran who still puts up solid numbers despite his age. Will he return for another season?
Despite returning a solid core of defenders, Charlotte will need to backfill a lot of talent up front to maintain another season of winning records and playoff qualification.
Image credit NCFC/One Knoxville
Meanwhile, Knoxville announced its departures and core group of returnees, then went silent. The positive news here is the team returns most of its highest producers from the 2024 season, with the exception of centerback Jalen Crisler (still a free agent). This is a core that gave up the fewest goals in the league, but also scored the fewest.
Sean Lewis and Johan Garibay will return in goal, two of the best in the league. Lewis is a back to back league Golden Glove winner.
We assume the team is aware of the offensive shortcomings and is working to back fill those needs. A good start is the return of Kempes Tekiela and Stavros Zarokostas, who showed signs of brilliance together in the last part of the season.
Want to track all the 2025 USL League One transactions? Check out my Transactions Tracker!
I like what Tormenta has done, and think they should be very good this season. My dark horse to really stand out is Prepelita. I think he's arguably good enough to be in USLC, and will show it on the pitch this year.