ONLY IN AMNEWYORK
For the first time in his 11-year professional career, Tim Parker was hitting free agency, where he expected the phone to ring quite a lot with teams clamoring for his services.
And understandably so.
The 32-year-old defender, who hails from Hicksville, NY, and attended St. John’s University in Queens, is just two years removed from being named to Major League Soccer’s Best XI as one of the top players in North America while with St. Louis City SC. He is 26 appearances short of 300 for his MLS career. He won a Supporters’ Shield as a key part of the New York Red Bulls’ defense in 2018 and was an All-Star with St. Louis as it won its first-ever Western Conference regular-season title.
But with his contract expiring at the end of the 2024 season, St. Louis shockingly traded him to the New England Revolution for the final stretch of the year. Then, in free agency, the phone was eerily silent. In fact, Parker’s agent had to call up teams to gauge their interest.
“The entire year was unexpected and not how I thought it would play out,” Parker told amNewYork. “To start, not re-signing in St. Louis, I thought that was a long shot. I didn’t think that by any means that I would not have been extended there just because of the season that we had in 2023. Obviously, finding out my fate of getting traded to New England wasn’t the best situation for me and my family… I knew it was a very short-term, temporary kind of solution.
“I entered free agency for the first time in my career, and I was excited for it. I thought that it was going to be a little bit different than it was… I just thought it’d be a different process. I thought there would be a little more of a recruiting process. Not necessarily of us having to reach out to as many teams. I thought it would be a little more reciprocated.”
It was not until early February, with clubs already well into their preseason ramp-up periods, that Parker signed a deal to reunite with the Red Bulls, whom he spent three seasons with from 2018 to 2020.
“There were some psychological challenges when preseason started, and I wasn’t in a preseason yet,” Parker said. “It was kind of like missing the first day of school. It was a tough little thing to jump over.”
Ask Parker and a considerable proponent of his quiet offseason — and the lack of calls from interested clubs — is predicated on MLS’s shift in philosophy. A league that once provided a center stage of sorts for American players has turned its interests elsewhere.
There is a priority on bringing over stars who once headlined the top European clubs on the planet, with Inter Miami hitting the holy grail by signing Lionel Messi, who in turn brought over Luis Suarez, Jordi Alba, and Sergio Busquets with him.
Meanwhile, the best young American talents are using the league as a springboard to the big European leagues.
Just this winter alone, NYCFC loaned midfielder James Sands to St. Pauli in Germany. The Red Bulls sold John Tolkin to Holstein Kiel, also of the Bundesliga. DC United transferred 18-year-old defender Matai Akinmboni to Bournemouth in the Premier League, and Real Salt Lake sent goalkeeper Gavin Beavers to Denmark’s Brondby.
“I think it’s unfortunate that the American player has lost some value in this league,” Parker began. “I understand it from a business perspective of the owners and the clubs, and bringing in guys that are young and then offloading them to Europe, or whatever the next step may be for those players. But at the same time, I think the American guys really do care about this league, me being one of them. I’ve been here my entire career, and I value everything it has. It does hurt to see sometimes that maybe we don’t get — I don’t want to say the respect we deserve — but I think the American guys want to play here. We don’t want to have to go anywhere else, so hopefully, they keep us around a little bit longer.”
Even with his extensive domestic resume, Parker has begun the season on Sandro Schwarz’s bench within New York’s three center-bac system behind new German signing Alexander Hack, young Swede Noah Eile, and former captain Sean Nealis.
A late start to the preseason might have something to do with it, but for now, the outside expectation is that he will be a depth option until alerted otherwise.
“It’s one of those things where I can control what I can control,” he said. “It’s about playing well every day, and right now, I came into this situation a little later than a lot of these guys. So, for me, it’s about getting as sharp as I can as quickly as I can. I feel like I’m doing a good job of that. Then, it’s on me to apply pressure to the guys that are playing because, ultimately, I want to play as well. But also, at the same time, there’s a lot of young guys in this locker room that I can definitely give a lot of experience and advice about being a pro, even things that I see during the game. I say this humbly, but I don’t get to watch a lot of games from the sidelines, so when I’m watching the games from the sidelines, I hope that I can actually give them some insight or advice as to what I’m seeing, especially because I’ve known the system pretty well.”
Roughly half of Parker’s first decade in MLS was spent playing the Red Bull style, which is headlined by an all-out, relentless approach. St. Louis played similarly to that, and it put New York at the top of his offseason list when searching for a new team. It also did not hurt that his family and friends are just an hour’s car ride away from Sports Illustrated Stadium.
Once a stalwart of the back line, he finds himself toeing a precarious, fine line in his second stint.
“It’s hard to battle yourself. You want to progress and help the guys that are ahead of you right now without getting a little bit sour toward them,” Parker said. “Ultimately, you want to play, but you also want to help them, but also not do it in a bad way where you’re not helping a guy because you think you should be paying over him, right?
“So it’s one of those things where I truly feel at home here in New York in more ways than one. But also in the way that I can feel comfortable in the role that I’m in as a leader and as a responsible veteran of the locker room to teach guys that are younger than me things that I’ve been able to see in my career.”
