Nouhou signs through 2026
Edit: Sounders have now made the new contract official. Sounders have signed Nouhou through 2025 with a club option until 2026.
Jeremiah Oshan has reported that left back Nouhou Tolo has signed a new long-term contract that will keep the 25 year-old’s contract under club control until at least 2026.
I must admit that I was one of the ones hoping that Sounders would be able to exchange Nouhou’s contract for a healthy fee and a dragon’s hoard of TAM over the offseason as he entered his final contract year. The Cameroonian performed pretty well at the World Cup in 2022 in a very difficult group featuring match-ups against Brazil, Serbia and Switzerland, and I was of the opinion that Sounders ought to learn from their mistake of not selling him after he impressed at the African Cup of Nations in early 2021 — when his value was probably highest — and pull the trigger after his good showing at the World Cup.
Whether it was due to no interest or because the interest ultimately wasn’t able to be exchanged into enough hard cash we likely won’t ever know, but Sounders ultimately chose not to sell him on over the winter, despite having had a replacement they were very high on, FK Molde’s Kristoffer Haugen, lined up. Based on the profile of Haugen, it is probable that the Sounders, in an ideal world, would prefer a more well-rounded skillset than Nouhou offers from their left back. Brian Schmetzer has always valued a balanced usage rate, and Nouhou has frustrated with how blunt his forays forward can be.
That said, the Sounders view Nouhou as a unique asset that’s not easily replaced. Craig Waibel, in the interview he recently gave to Sounder At Heart, described Nouhou as “the best one-on-one defender in MLS.” Sounders fans who have seen his performances against the likes of Mohamed Salah, Raphinha, Xherdan Shaqiri, and Riyad Mahrez will know the guy can hold his own, even at the highest stage when the pressure is on.
When you combine this unique defensive strength with his natural left-footedness and relatively small cap hit, Nouhou is a valuable asset, perhaps more valuable to the Sounders than other teams are willing to pay for. Indeed, now that Nouhou has hit his mid-20s, I think the money on offer for him will be less as Nouhou’s potential is more or less displaced by his actual trajectory as a player.
As such, the more I think about it, the more I like the Sounders holding on to him. First of all, he’s the right age profile. The 4-year contract will cover Nouhou’s prime years as a player, and further reinforce the core group of similar age players that Sounders are building around for the next contract cycle.
Second, good left-sided players, and in particular left-sided players that can defend, simply do not grow on trees. The cap hit he will command (my guess is between $500–600k) is a bargain for this skillset and position profile, and crucially, locking him down now leaves Waibel with less work to do this summer as Nouhou comes off the list of first-term members’ contracts that are set to expire at the end of the season (see below).
Finally, he’s a known quantity. Schmetzer and his staff know how to deploy him, and his teammates are familiar with his tendencies and know how to move with and off him on the field. While it is still early, the 2023 iteration of the Sounders have seemingly figured out a way to play to his strengths while also finding other solutions for width and attacking intent down the left side, a hugely encouraging turn of events for those concerned with how impotent the left side of attack looked for much of Sounders’ historically bad 2022 MLS campaign.
On balance, I like the decision and look foward to Nouhou in rave green for three more years.
