New York Red Bulls in talks over Timo Werner move
The New York Red Bulls are engaged in talks over a move for RB Leipzig forward Timo Werner.
Werner, 29, has 57 caps for Germany and has spent the last 18 months on loan at Tottenham Hotspur, but is surplus to requirements at Leipzig and will be allowed to leave. No agreement has been reached yet, but both sides are optimistic that a deal can be concluded this summer.
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Werner has actually been a long-time target for the RBNY and had the option of joining the club in the summer of 2024. It's understood that negotiations have been underway for some months and that Werner would be keen on a move to MLS, where he would reunite with his former Leipzig teammate, Emil Forsberg.
A wide forward, Werner joined Leipzig from Stuttgart in 2016 and scored 78 goals in 127 Bundesliga appearances before to earn a move to Chelsea in 2020, with whom he won the Champions League in 2021.
He rejoined Leipzig in 2022, earning a recall to the German national team, and was part of the side that won the DFB-Pokal in 2023, the first trophy in the club's history. But after falling out of favour at Red Bull Arena, he joined Tottenham on loan in January 2024. That loan was then extended by a further year, during which Werner was part of the Spurs team that won the Europa League under Ange Postecoglou.
Last season saw the Red Bulls reach MLS Cup for the first time since 2008, falling to fellow founding member LA Galaxy. This winter the club signed Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting, who has been the team's starting striker.
Werner projects to fit in nicely on the left of the forward line, with Scotland international Lewis Morgan on the right and Forsberg pulling the strings beneath. At the midpoint of the 2025 season, New York sits 7th in the Eastern Conference, narrowly in the playoff places.
It's unclear whether New York has Werner's 'discovery rights', an MLS mechanism to prevent clubs from up-bidding one another for talent from outside of the league. Should New York need to obtain those rights from another club, they have plenty of allocation money available; as of February 28, their ledger sat at nearly $1.7 million of the league-issued currency.
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July 7, 2001: As he looked for a way out between Rounds 5 and 6, Hector Camacho Jr. focused only on the slender cut above his right eye and the story he would soon have to tell. He tried as best he could to ignore the boos ringing out inside Brooklyn's KeySpan Park, and he also ignored the fact that his father, a three-weight world champion known as 'Macho' Camacho, had never been stopped in 88 professional fights. Because this, you see, was not your ordinary stoppage. It was instead one Camacho Jr. was about to engineer himself, a wound self-inflicted. It was, for a boxer, as far from macho as one can possibly get. It's true that there had been a head-butt; an accidental one in Round 5. However, the cut it produced above Camacho Jr.'s eye appeared to be manageable; of more concern to Camacho Jr. in that moment was not the blemish itself but rather what it did to his opponent, Jesse James Leija. Now, you see, Leija was all of a sudden invigorated and shifting the momentum. 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Hector "Macho" Camacho Jr. (right) and his father, seven-time world champion Hector "Macho" Camacho Sr., pose in February 2001, just five months before Camacho Jr.'s infamous night against Jesse James Leija. (RHONA WISE via Getty Images) December 20, 2019: Eighteen years after the son of Hector 'Macho' Camacho searched for a way out of a tough fight, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. went through the same thought process and book of excuses in Phoenix, Arizona. Sporting a bleach blonde and bubble-gum blue hairdo, Chavez Jr. was by this stage of his career content to pose as a fighter and collect money rather than live as a fighter and collect titles. Not just that, he had entered a super middleweight fight against Daniel Jacobs both heavy and uninspired. He had also repudiated the need for drug-testing, meaning he and Jacobs ended up in Phoenix, where the testing was a little less stringent and Chavez Jr. felt more comfortable. 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Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.'s decision to quit against Daniel Jacobs nearly ignited a riot inside Phoenix's Talking Stick Resort Arena. (Manuel Velasquez via Getty Images) 'It's an enviable thing, to be able to receive your identity from your father,' wrote Marilynne Robinson in "Gilead," and to some extent that is true. In some lines of work nepotism opens more doors than wounds and tends to be viewed as only a privilege. It creates job opportunities and it offers a degree of comfort which means the essentials are not so essential. It also reduces the desperation and urgency which fuels everybody else, leaving the spawn of the rich and famous with time, space and bountiful options. On the flip side of that is the neglect. This is more common in instances of proper fame, and more common in certain professions, but it is part of the deal nonetheless. If you want pretty things, and you want opportunities, there is still a price to pay even for those who believe they can afford everything. 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They look for a way out because they know there is one, whereas their fathers, led by ignorance and empty bellies, had no idea that stopping was even an option. In addition to this softness, there are particular pressures boxing's nepo babies must face. There is the pressure to be as good as their father, or not disgrace them, and there is the pressure to quickly get involved in fights that allow them to truly monetize their famous name. This rush toward the light invariably comes at the expense of their development and throws them into situations for which they are unprepared, leading to defeat and, alas, disappointed dads. To be born to a famous fighter is to be born into a kind of privilege at odds with what drove that famous fighter to success in the first place. It is, in other words, counterproductive for a boxer to take to boxing from a position of comfort or, indeed, softness. Many go that way, but not all of them. Some manage to carve out a decent career for themselves and treat the sport with the seriousness and respect it deserves. Some, like Tim Tszyu and Chris Eubank Jr., display a hard-to-explain toughness which is almost tantamount to defiance; a refusal to be seen as soft. For fighters like that, there is perhaps a compulsion to go even harder, just because they know the tradition and the stereotype. 'At first my father was reluctant to allow me to attend training sessions,' said Eubank Jr., whose father, Chris, was a WBO champion at both middleweight and super middleweight. 'He didn't understand why I was doing it and, of course, he knew just how hard the sport was. He didn't want me to experience the same sacrifices and hardships he had to go through during his own career. 'As time went on, though, he began to see just how seriously I was taking boxing and how much I was improving, and that was when he started to warm to the idea. He needed to know I wasn't just mucking around and that I had some potential. 'Obviously, when he said he didn't want me to box, it only made me want to box more. Like any young kid, I wanted to know more about this thing he told me to stay away from. I wanted to see if it was as extreme as he said it was.' As a child, Eubank Jr. never even watched boxing. It was in fact only once he started training that he became interested in the likes of Muhammad Ali, Roy Jones Jr. and the Four Kings: Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns, Marvin Hagler and Roberto Duran. As for his dad, Chris Jr. did not need to see his dad in action to know that he had been a fighter. He was reminded of it every day. He was reminded of it again, too, when his dad finally let him go to the gym at the age of 15. 'I got badly beaten up on my first day at the gym,' Eubank Jr. recalled. 'The kid must have been 18 or 19 and probably had 20 to 30 amateur bouts to his name. Everybody in the gym assumed that because of my name, and because of who my father was, I would be able to walk into the gym and handle myself. But I was thrown to the wolves that day and paid the price. I got absolutely battered for three rounds, left the gym and made a pact with myself that something like that would never happen to me again.' Chris Eubank Jr. alongside his Hall of Fame father, Chris Eubank Sr., ahead of April's second-generation fight against Conor Benn. (Action Images via Reuters / Reuters) Even if softness was not to blame, that baptism in Brighton was everything Chris Eubank, the boy's father, had feared. Though they shared a name, two of them, Eubank knew what hard looked like and he knew that his son didn't look like he did when he got into boxing. He didn't speak the same, he didn't live the same, he didn't wear the same clothes. In a word, he was privileged. The only burden he carried was the target on his back. It was for that reason Eubank Sr. decided to send his son to live in America at age 17, convinced that the experience would add callouses to soft hands. 'The time I spent in Vegas is what has made me the fighter I am today,' said Eubank Jr., who sparred the likes of Zab Judah, Chad Dawson and Montell Griffin while out there. 'I spent about four years there in total and worked with some of the best trainers and fighters in the world. I started off with Mike McCallum and then worked with Floyd Mayweather Sr. I learned so much from everybody who took me on the pads or spoke in my ear. 'My dad played a massive part in coming to that decision. He knew it would be better for me to go to America as an unknown, with no pressure, in order to learn my trade away from the spotlight. 'But I wasn't with my family or friends, and that is always tough. I also didn't know a single soul out there to begin with. I just kept thinking that if I was able to survive that experience and come out the other side a better boxer and man, it would have been worthwhile. In boxing terms, I knew I'd be on another level to other young prospects when I returned to England.' Today, similar thoughts run through the head of super lightweight Emiliano Vargas. He is not only one of the brightest prospects in the sport but also happens to be the youngest son of Fernando Vargas, a former IBF and WBA super welterweight champion. 'My father never really thought I would box,' said Emiliano, who had 130 amateur bouts and was a seven-time national champion. 'He thought I'd pick it up and leave it alone. I was just the chubby kid who liked to eat. 'We opened a boxing gym and one thing led to another. A couple of amateur fights in I'm starting to take this really seriously and winning big tournaments. Now here we are. 'It's a beautiful dynamic, man. I love my father to death. He never had a father so this is special for him. He's kind of living through my eyes — how it would have been to have his father at fights, and to watch him cut weight. I know it's big for him and it's big for me, too. I love having that relationship with my father. There's nothing better than winning with people that you love.' Now 21, Vargas has reached the age at which distractions are both rife and legal. He is also the age his father was when, at 14-0, he stopped Mexico's Luis 'Yori Boy' Campas in seven rounds to win the IBF super welterweight title in 1998. Maybe, for Vargas (14-0, 12 KOs), that is the real distraction. Emiliano Vargas poses with his father, Fernando Vargas, after defeating Juan Leon in a junior welterweight bout this past May. (Steve Marcus via Getty Images) Since cutting short his date with Daniel Jacobs, an ever-softening Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. has boxed five times. He has won three fights, lost two, and shared a ring with both Anderson Silva and Uriah Hall, two former mixed martial artists who, like Chavez Jr., have in recent years experienced something of an identity crisis. No closer to his own answers, Chavez Jr., at 39, is still trying to figure out who or what he is, and knows only that he is not his father. He may have been blessed with his chin, and he may have won a world title in 2011, but time has shown not only the differences between father and son, but all that the son lacks: Hunger, discipline, persistence. Even toughness, that is a relative term. He showed it against Sergio Martinez, for instance, when almost evoking his father's last-gasp win against Meldrick Taylor, but after a while everything became too tough for Chavez Jr. Making weight became too tough. Doing drug tests became too tough. Finishing fights became too tough. His next fight, on Saturday against Jake Paul, is easier than most, though still feels emblematic of Chavez Jr.'s petulant, rebellious phase. On one level it offers an adult child the opportunity to show a cosplayer that he was never cosplaying at all, and in turn prove his authenticity. On another level it brings Chavez Jr. closer to the kind of boxer, or character, he himself has become and puts him in the only kind of fight he can manage these days: A brief and ultimately meaningless one, with exit signs everywhere he looks. Julio Chavez Jr. (right) fights Jake Paul on Saturday night in Anaheim, California. (Anadolu via Getty Images) Of course, if the blonde-and-blue version of Chavez Jr. we saw for five rounds against Jacobs in 2019 is present on Saturday, he will be too much for Jake Paul. Flawed though he was, even that version of the Mexican would be enough to show any Disney child or YouTuber the difference between doing it and being it and reveal there are various degrees of 'softness' in this sport. However, there can be no guarantee that Chavez Jr., a pro for 22 years, is still capable of hitting those same notes in 2025. What is more, he now fights someone whose privilege is a weapon yet to be used against him; someone whose privilege has built muscles, bought opportunities, and enabled him to call out Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez and Anthony Joshua with a straight face and no fear of repercussion. In fact, while Chavez Jr. spent his entire career trying to prove himself worthy of a name, Paul (11-1, 7 KOs) has only ever had to prove that he is a boxer. Meaning: Just as their challenges are different, so too is their privilege. In the case of Chavez Jr., an already hard task was made harder by his privilege, whereas, for Paul, becoming a boxer has never been easier than it is today. It is now even an option for the softest of men. All one needs are gloves, a ring and an opponent happy to lose.
