When Wayne Rooney returned to DC United in July, 2022, there was a buzz in the nation’s capital.
The Manchester United legend rejoined a club he had helped lead as a player in both 2018 and 2019 – this time, though, he arrived on the East Coast as a manager. Success didn’t follow. After two seasons of playoff-less soccer in the Rooney era, the Englishman left at the end of the 2023 campaign and headed back across the Atlantic to take a job with Birmingham City.
Going into the 2024 offseason, then, there were a host of questions swirling around DC United. The biggest one was this: could anyone breathe new life into a once-great club? There had been moments of excellence for DC in the not-entirely-distant past, but they had missed the playoffs four seasons in a row and they hadn’t made it past the first round since 2015.
To help reverse their fortunes, DC United hired Ally Mackay as their new general manager and chief soccer officer over the offseason.
