Eddie Pope Takes the MLS Pathway After a Core Exit

Major League Soccer named Eddie Pope senior vice president of sporting development on July 23, two months after Carolina Core FC ended his run as chief sporting officer. He also becomes senior vice president of competition and operations for MLS NEXT Pro, reporting to Ali Curtis, the league’s executive vice president of sporting development and president of MLS NEXT Pro.

The league release sold a Hall of Famer coming home. It did not say the independent club he had built in High Point, North Carolina, had listed him as departing in May, or that the clubs with no MLS parent just watched one of their own take the chair that writes their rules.

MLS Named Pope After Carolina Core Let Him Go

Carolina Core FC announced a sporting-staff shake-up on May 26, aimed at what principal investor Megan Oglesby called the club’s long-term vision and future direction. The club said four members of the sporting staff would leave, and it named them in order.

THE FOUR WHO LEFT CAROLINA CORE

• Eddie Pope: Chief sporting officer, the founding soccer boss of the High Point independent.
• Donovan Ricketts: Head coach, out as the club opened a search for his replacement.
• Amado Guevara: Assistant coach, listed with the same sporting group.
• Andy Williams: Assistant general manager and head scout.

Jake Davis, the goalkeeper coach and analyst, moved in as interim head coach that day. Oglesby thanked the four and did not describe a promotion, a loan to the league office, or a planned handoff to MLS.

These decisions are never easy, but we believe they are necessary as we continue building the culture, standards, and competitive future we envision for this club.

Megan Oglesby, Principal Investor, Carolina Core FC

MLS still introduced Pope in July as the man who had “most recently” served as Carolina Core’s chief sporting officer, then moved on to Curtis praising his class and work rate. The calendar in between is the part the announcement skipped: North Carolina inducted Pope into its sports hall of fame in Greensboro on May 1, the club cut the sporting group 25 days later, and the league office hired him in July.

Curtis called Pope experienced, thoughtful, and a tireless worker, and said the league was excited to welcome him. Pope said he was proud to join and called the move a natural next step after spending his whole professional playing career in MLS.

https://x.com/MLSNEXTPRO/status/2080367388126580825

Independent Clubs Play With No Parent Team Above Them

MLS NEXT Pro launched in 2022 as the paid rung between the MLS NEXT youth platform and MLS first teams. Most of its clubs are reserve sides. Players can shuttle up to an MLS roster, drop back down, and walk from an academy session into a professional dressing room because the same organization owns both ends.

Carolina Core is not that. MLS NEXT Pro announced the High Point club on November 10, 2022, as a new independent that would start in 2024, with Pope as chief sporting officer overseeing technical staff, personnel, deals, and scouting. Rochester New York FC had been the league’s first independent. Core became the second, a hometown project for a defender who grew up in High Point and still talks about YMCA fields and local camps.

In February, while he still held the Core job, Pope described the gap in plain terms. Affiliate sides have a first team above them. His club was the first team, still building an academy, and trying to move players on to MLS, the USL, or Europe rather than up a corporate ladder that did not exist.

As an independent club, we’re not affiliated with a specific MLS first team. Most MLS organizations have their own MLS NEXT Pro side, which allows them to move players up and down between the first team and NEXT Pro. They can also bring academy players into the professional environment and sign outside talent directly into their structure. For us, it’s a bit different. We are effectively the first team, and we’re still building out the full academy pathway.

Eddie Pope, then Carolina Core FC chief sporting officer, February 2026 interview

That is the job he lost in May, and the job description he now supervises from New York. The independents do not share an MLS payroll, and they do not get to park a teenager on a first-team bench for a Saturday in March. They do play under the same competition rules, medical protocols, and operations calendar Pope has been hired to lead.

What the New Job Covers Across Three Leagues

The dual title is not ceremonial. On the MLS side, Pope is charged with lining up the pathway across MLS NEXT, MLS NEXT Pro, and the first-team league, and with directing on-field innovation, including new sporting initiatives and rules at all three levels. At NEXT Pro he owns the long-term sporting vision plus competition, medical, player relations, and operations. At MLS NEXT he is in the room for the youth league’s growth, events, and claim to be the main elite pathway in North America.

THE LADDER POPE NOW SITS ON

• MLS first teams: 30 clubs in the United States and Canada, in the league’s 31st season in 2026.
• MLS NEXT Pro: Fifth season, 30 teams, 27 MLS-affiliated and three independent, 420 regular-season matches.
• MLS NEXT: Youth platform launched in 2020, now the pool that feeds the paid rungs below first teams.
• The conversion rate: The 2026 NEXT Pro season opened with more than 230 players to date already signed to MLS first-team contracts after time in NEXT Pro, and more than 1,300 MLS NEXT academy players already capped at that level since 2022.

Those 230 first-team deals are the number affiliate clubs use to justify a reserve side that often plays in a quiet stadium. Homegrown pipelines such as the FC Dallas academy after its World Cup already treat NEXT Pro as a waiting room with a door upstairs. Independent clubs cannot open that door. Pope now writes policy for both models.

Curtis said Pope’s perspective would help the league grow the game, evolve MLS, and develop the next generation. The practical file is narrower: who gets called up, who sits, how medical staffs share players, and which rules get tested on a Tuesday night in High Point before they ever reach an Apple TV first-team match.

High Point, Chattanooga, and the Incoming Independents

The 2026 NEXT Pro map is still a reserve league with a small independent bloc. Connecticut United FC joined as the 30th club and the third independent, sitting in an Eastern Conference that now has 16 teams against 14 in the West. Each club plays 28 games, 14 home and 14 away. Decision Day is Sunday, September 20, when all 30 play and the playoff seeds lock.

Pope’s old club is one of three independents already in the fight. Four more unaffiliated projects are on the league’s own coming-soon list, which means the man who used to run one of those businesses will soon be the competition boss for a larger independent set, not a novelty of two or three.

INDEPENDENT CLUBS ON POPE’S DESK

Affiliate clubs can treat NEXT Pro as a cost center. Independents have to sell tickets in High Point, Chattanooga, and Connecticut, and they have to find a next club for a player who outgrows the roster. Pope told that story from the inside in February. He now hears it as the man who sets the sporting calendar those clubs live on.

He Already Sat on the Other Side of the Table

The playing record is why the release led with legend. Pope, a High Point native, came out of the University of North Carolina and went No. 2 to D.C. United in the first MLS college draft in 1996. He scored the overtime goal that decided the first MLS championship, then won the Cup again in 1997 and 1999. He was MLS Defender of the Year in 1997 and a four-time Best XI pick. He played 12 seasons in the league, earned 82 caps, went to the 1996 Olympics, and played in the 1998, 2002, and 2006 World Cups, starting all five U.S. games at the 2002 tournament. The National Soccer Hall of Fame took him in 2011.

The executive file is why the dual title makes sense, and why the independents should care who holds it.

POPE’S PATH TO THE LEAGUE OFFICE

1. 1996: Drafted second overall by D.C. United; scores the first MLS Cup winner; debuts for the full national team.
2. 2008-2015: Director of player relations for the MLS Players Association; the league’s own biography of him says he helped negotiate two collective bargaining agreements.
3. 2015-2022: Director of North American soccer at Octagon, the agency side of the same player market.
4. November 10, 2022: Named chief sporting officer of Carolina Core FC, an independent MLS NEXT Pro club in his hometown.
5. 2024: Core begins play in High Point.
6. May 1, 2026: Inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in Greensboro.
7. May 26, 2026: Core lists him among four sporting-staff departures.
8. July 23, 2026: MLS names him SVP of sporting development and SVP of competition and operations for MLS NEXT Pro.

Player relations is one of the NEXT Pro departments in his new brief. He spent seven years on the union side of that table, then seven more as an agent, then four building a club that had to live with league rules it did not write. The press release treated that as a character reference. It is also a map of who now sits in the chair: someone who has bargained against the league, sold players through it, and tried to run a first team that the structure still calls a development side.

Decision Day Arrives With a New Operator

The 2026 NEXT Pro season started on February 27, the earliest kickoff in league history, and it kept playing through the World Cup window. Decision Day on September 20 ends the regular season. A play-in round, the first in league history, is set for October 9 to 11, with each conference’s No. 8 seed facing No. 9 before the pick-your-opponent bracket begins. Pope’s competition brief now includes a format that did not exist when he was still in High Point.

Eleven clubs opened the year with new head coaches. Red Bull New York II is defending the 2025 title after a Cup final that drew more than 9,000 and went to a shootout. Michael Bradley left that bench for the Red Bulls first team. The youth-to-pro ladder is producing coaches as well as players, and the independent clubs are still the exception on a 30-team grid built for affiliates.

Pope said he had been impressed by the league’s spending on the pathway and wanted to build on it. The independents he used to work among will judge that by whether the rules still let a High Point club function as a first team, or whether NEXT Pro keeps hardening into a closed reserve system with a few unaffiliated tenants. He is the first person in the league office who has had to make payroll without an MLS parent above him. That is the part of the hire the announcement did not need to sell, and the part the clubs without a parent will feel first.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which MLS Clubs Did Eddie Pope Play For?

After D.C. United, Pope was traded to the MetroStars with Jaime Moreno and Richie Williams, then moved in 2005 to expansion side Real Salt Lake, where he finished his 12-year MLS career and later went into the league’s all-time Best XI. He did not play for Carolina Core FC; that job was strictly as an executive.

Does MLS NEXT Pro Have a Salary Cap?

Pope said in February that MLS NEXT Pro has no salary cap, no minimum, and no maximum, which is one reason independent clubs can build rosters differently from MLS first teams, even though some transfer revenue is still shared inside the wider system. That flexibility is now on the desk of a man who used to spend it.

How Many World Cup Matches Did Eddie Pope Play?

The National Soccer Hall of Fame credits him with nine World Cup matches across 1998, 2002, and 2006, plus 31 World Cup qualifiers, inside an 82-cap career that also included eight international goals. He started every U.S. match at the 2002 tournament, when the team reached the quarterfinals.

Who Owns Carolina Core FC?

The ownership group is led by principal investors Megan Oglesby, Matt Penley, and Mark Penley, the same principals named when MLS NEXT Pro awarded High Point its independent club in 2022, with additional local investors around that core. Oglesby is the voice on the May sporting-staff statement that ended Pope’s time at the club.