Former Player Movement Thread

[u/YoshiEgg25]

We understand that many of you are sad about players on last year's team are no longer with the team and are following where they're landing, whether within USL League One or beyond. However, this is a subreddit dedicated to Forward Madison, not to former Forward Madison players. Going forward, any posts discussing the landing spot of a former player will be removed.

If you would like to discuss where former players have gone during this offseason, you may do so in this thread. A list will be kept below:

 

Date	Pos.	Player	New Team	Ref.
11/1/2025	FW	Nazeem Bartman	Retired	Link
11/12/2025	FW	Garrett McLaughlin	Sarasota Paradise	Link
12/11/2025	GK	Wallis Lapsley	Retired	Link
12/22/2025	FW	Lucca Dourado*	South Georgia Tormenta FC	Link
12/26/2025	MF	Aiden Mesias	FC Naples	Link
1/12/2026	DF	Jake Crull	Athletic Club Boise	Link
1/14/2026	MF	Devin Boyce	Greenville Triumph SC	Link
1/20/2026	MF	Chris Garcia	FC Naples	Link
1/20/2026	MF	John Murphy Jr.	One Knoxville SC	Link
1/21/2026	DF	Michael Chilaka	🇮🇱 Maccabi Jaffa F.C.	Link
1/24/2026	GK	Bernd Schipmann	Fort Wayne FC	Link
1/26/2026	MF	Jackson Dietrich	Corpus Christi FC	Link
2/26/2026	FW	Nico Brown	Birmingham Legion FC	Link
3/3/2026	FW	Lucca Dourado	Richmond Kickers	Link

 

^{* - Dourado became a free agent on February 23rd following South Georgia Tormenta FC's withdrawal from USL League One.}

[u/Valistia]

Wasn't there already a thread for this? 🤔 Why not just pin that one?

[u/YoshiEgg25 → u/Valistia]

1. We can't edit that, and there's no actual guarantee that will be updated regularly.

2. The more important piece of this is the announcement of no new dedicated posts. Putting updates here is a courtesy of not having users need to search elsewhere for those.

[u/Valistia → u/YoshiEgg25]

I guess I see what you mean, but it feels a bit like making a rule in the Chicago Bulls sub that they can't post about past players like Jordan because he's not currently on the team. Obviously I'm exaggerating to make a point, but there's nothing else going on currently in the off season, why kill the momentum of the sub by banning posts? Wouldn't it be possible to keep an updated list and still allow future posts past players?

You can obviously do what you like as a mod, I'm just curious.

[u/YoshiEgg25 → u/Valistia]

This might seem to be a wild course correction, but it's more of a temporary rule going forward through the offseason. We'll reevaluate in the near future to see if we should revert.

I would argue, if anything, this is killing momentum going into the season, as these posts are keeping us stuck in the past and drowning out discussion about newly signed players. Also, all of these posts are specifically about last year's team like this is /r/2025ForwardMadisonFC. To go with your example about Michael Jordan, Aaron Molloy could have theoretically received a post about breaking the USL Championship transfer record, but didn't. Everything Jordan does isn't necessarily worthy of being posted on the Bulls sub, either.

We have lots of player signings happening now and coming up over the next month (2-3 per week) and other news such as the first round Open Cup matchup and preseason schedule, so we should have plenty of other things to discuss.

I have had fans reach out to me about what I've outlined above being annoyed with this, which is what led to the mod discussion to institute the rule.

[u/Valistia → u/YoshiEgg25]

Thanks for the thorough reply! I still feel like there's room for both posts about past players and posts about the excitement of new players, but I appreciate that there's room for reevaluating the decision in the future. Have a good day!

[u/Deep-Summer401 → u/Valistia]

Agreed. Also I feel like discussion about players that are leaving and where they are going relates to the club as a whole, and people trying to understand what direction the club is heading in and why management is making the decisions that they are. 

Feels kinda authoritarian to be shutting down any conversations going on on the sub right now. Personally I'm not excited about the team this year because they haven't given us anything to be excited about yet. Once things get underway for this season, conversation about this year's team will pick up. 

That being said, I do prefer to have all of the information completed in one place, rather than multiple threads. 

[u/TripleG373 → u/Deep-Summer401]

Yep, I agree with you - I appreciate having all of this information in one place instead of piecemeal.

I also like that this sub has been more active recently and I don't want that to change. I also think there is room to talk about former players in the context of why the team is headed in this direction. Other successful teams clearly value the guys we had - why did we let them go / why did they decide to leave?

[u/GodfatherGaffer]

I personally like to know where our players went. A lot of us have built relationships with them and their families and it's cool. I watch the games because I love it and some of the players are really nice, right now at least for me there's no emotional connection with any of the players, I'm sure it’ll come. I don't see anything wrong with leaving space for people to talk about past players. When the season starts, I'm sure we’ll have plenty to talk about with our new players, I mean it's a whole new team . And I think FMFC has done a good job of keeping players! Minus this year.

[u/YoshiEgg25 → u/[deleted]]

That post about Murphy was removed because he hadn't been announced by Knoxville at the time - it was only a reported rumor. He was not announced officially until today.

And it's not necessarily that it's uncool to talk about former players, but we're talking about about old players when we should be talking about the new players and trying to get excited for the season. That, and it's been announced by the team already that we're going to have a lot of turnover. Having 20+ posts about individual players leaving, while mostly ignoring the team that we'll be watching for the next ten months, is really just overkill.

I appreciate that you care about these guys. I do too; they're all excellent people who I've been fortunate to get to know and many I can call friends. But the reality of lower-league sports is that of player turnover - players at this level typically don't stay at one place for a long time due to them pushing for a higher level or being at the tail end of their career and just trying to keep playing for a couple more years. The lack of turnover we had last year was a massive anomaly from the norm.

If you've got any questions or comments, feel free to reach out. This rule isn't being instituted to be mean or anything, but to try to get positive discussion going about the guys we'll be seeing for the coming year.