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The Major League Soccer July transfer window is still over two weeks away, but the Columbus Crew just announced a major piece of business. The two-time MLS Cup-winning franchise just announced the biggest deal in club history. The Crew will pay over $10 million for 23-year-old Watford forward Cucho Hernandez in the hopes of boosting its struggling offense.

Columbus Crew just splashed record cash on talented young forward Cucho Hernandez

Cucho Hernandez is a 23-year-old Columbian forward from Watford. Hernandez made 23 English Premier League appearances last season and tallied five goals and two assists.

Playing center-forward and on both wings, Hernandez also has 27 goals and 13 assists in his stops at Getafe, RDC Mallorca, and SD Huesca in Spain.

With Watford being relegated to the EFL Championship next season, it needed to sell the young prospect.

For the Columbus Crew, Hernandez is precisely what the struggling side needs. The team currently sits in 11th place in the Eastern Conference despite a +1 goal differential. That’s because the offense has been stagnant this season. The Crew sits 21st out of 28 teams with just 18 goals this season.

The Crew traded striker Gyasi Zardes to the Colorado Rapids in April to shake things up, and Hernandez will make an excellent replacement, although not a cheap one.

ESPN reports that “Columbus will pay a club-record fee of just more than $10 million” to bring Hernandez to Ohio.  

The new goal-scorer will fill the Crew’s Young Designated Player slot, and his contract runs through 2025. However, Hernandez will miss Columbus’ next three games (@ Real Salt Lake, vs. Toronto FC, vs. Philadelphia Union) because he won’t be eligible until the MLS transfer window opens on July 7.

This means that Cucho Hernandez will likely make his MLS and Columbus Crew debut on July 9 at the Chicago Fire.

All stats courtesy of Transfermrkt

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Tim Crean

Tim Crean started writing about sports in 2016 and joined Sportscasting in 2021. He excels with his versatile coverage of the NFL and soccer landscape, as well as his expertise breaking down sports media, which stems from his many years downloading podcasts before they were even cool and countless hours spent listening to Mike & The Mad Dog and The Dan Patrick Show, among other programs.

As a longtime self-professed sports junkie who even played DII lacrosse at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York, Tim loves reading about all the latest sports news every day and considers it a dream to write about sports professionally. He’s a lifelong Buffalo Bills fan from Western New York who mistakenly thought, back in the early ’90s, that his team would be in the Super Bowl every year. He started following European soccer — with a Manchester City focus — in the early 2000s after spending far too much time playing FIFA.

When he’s not enjoying a round of golf or coaching youth soccer and flag football, Tim likes reading the work of Bill Simmons, Tony Kornheiser, Chuck Klosterman, and Tom Wolfe.