New York City FC reportedly will pay a transfer fee worth up to €7 million ($8.28 million USD) to acquire forward Moussa Sylla from FC Schalke 04 in the German 2.Bundesliga.
Sylla, a 26-year-old Mali international, is confirmed to be on his way out of Schalke. The club put out a statement on Twitter before their January 25 match against 1. FC Kaiserslautern that said "Moussa Sylla is facing a move abroad and is therefore not part of the matchday squad. Schalke 04 and the receiving club have reached a basic agreement."
According to a report from Florian Plettenberg of Sky Sports Germany, the receiving club will be New York City FC. Plettenberg says the player will take his medical and officially sign "soon," but that he's on his way to New York City.
Another report from a different Sky Germany reporter says the guaranteed transfer fee to Schalke will be "around €6M" ($7.1 million USD) and that some of that amount is destined for Sylla's most recent pre-Schalke club, Pau FC of France's Ligue 2, the second tier of the French soccer pyramid.
The size of the transfer fee New York City will pay for Sylla is one of the largest in the club's history and would mean he's extremely likely to require a Designated Player slot to fit on the MLS roster. At present, New York City has all three of its DP spots filled, given Thiago Martins and Nico Fernández Mercau are in place, and that Talles Magno has come in from the proverbial cold and is back with the club for preseason.
The club's new Sporting Director, Todd Dunivant, has until the MLS roster compliance deadline – Friday, February 20 at 8 pm ET – to figure out how all the pieces will fit together for NYCFC under the byzantine MLS roster rules, whether that's moving Talles Magno along to a new team, or possibly negotiating a new non-DP contract with Thiago Martins, who in 2026 is in his final year under contract with NYCFC after the club exercised his contract option at the end of the 2025 season.
Background on Sylla
Sylla debuted professionally for AS Monaco in Ligue 1 in France in April 2018 at age-18 and scored a brace in his first-career start for Monaco, a 2-1 away win over SM Caen near the end of a season in which Monaco finished in 3rd Place in the Ligue 1 table.
The forward would spend three seasons with Monaco but those two goals scored in his debut would be the only he'd ever score for the club. Sylla woud leave Monaco to join FC Utrecht in September 2020, moving to the Dutch Eredivisie side in a free transfer. That period with Utrecht is likely when current NYCFC Head Coach Pascal Jansen first caught up-close glimpse of Sylla, as Jansen was on the coaching staff of AZ Alkmaar in the Eredivisie during the years Sylla spent in the Netherlands.
Sylla's best season in the Eredivisie came in 2021-22, when the forward scored seven goals and added two assists in 27 appearances in all competitions. His time in the Netherlands ended in January 2023, when he moved on another free transfer, this time heading back to France to sign with SM Caen – the team he scored his first two professional goals against.
He'd only make 13 appearances for Caen at the tail-end of their 2022-23 season, then moved to a different Ligue 2 club for 2023-24 – Pau FC, with Sylla joining on loan. That 2023-24 season with Pau was Sylla's breakout, his first of back-to-back seasons with 15+ goals scored. Pau would sell Sylla to Schalke after his big 2023-24 season for a reported €2.5 million transfer fee, his last stop before making the leap to New York City FC.
Replacing the lost Martínez goals
Moussa Sylla looks set to be a like-for-like replacement for the injured Alonso Martínez, who will miss much of the 2026 season recovering from the ACL injury he suffered last fall. Martínez scored 18 goals in all competitions in 2024, then 21 goals in all competitions in 2025; Sylla scored 16 goals in all comps for Pau FC in 2023-24, then 15 for Schalke in his first season in Germany in 2024-25.
Both Sylla and Martínez are forwards with experience playing as a striker and also as a wide attacker, with Sylla spending lots of time on the wing in his last season in France in 2023-24, a year in which he not only scored those 16 goals but also added seven assists.
To look at their most recent full seasons side-by-side, Martínez's 2025 in MLS and Sylla's 2024-25 in the 2.Bundesliga, you'll see similar attacking profiles, though with Martínez much more of a threat off the dribble than Sylla.
Jansen's requests met
Pascal Jansen spoke to the New York City FC media on Thursday and explicitly said he asked the front office to give him two new players: A defensive replacement for Justin Haak, and another option to play as the No 9 while Alonso Martínez recovers.
Jansen even said it was "looking good" in regard to signing a new striker, so the NYCFC coach must have been confident that the deal for Sylla would get done as far back as last Thursday.
Kai Trewin, the Australian center-back from Melbourne City FC, looks like Jansen's replacement at the back for Haak, and now Sylla enters to plug the hole created by Martínez's injury, but with the ability to shift out to the wing if and when the Costa Rican fully recovers from his knee injury.
Todd Dunivant looks to have gotten both those needs addressed early in this 2026 preseason, if Kai Trewin and Moussa Sylla both finalize their moves to NYCFC. That's a departure from the timeline of signings often made under previous Sporting Director David Lee, who tended to leave his business for late in the MLS Primary Window, or to simply wait until the MLS Secondary Window during the summer.
If Sylla is soon officially added to the mix, New York City will have addressed the two most glaring question marks hovering over their roster heading into the 2026 season.
