Henry Wingo joins Hungarian club on nearly $1M transfer fee

Henry Wingo has officially joined Hungarian club Ferencvaros TC on a transfer reportedly valued at more than $900,000, and the Seattle Sounders should get a nice payday out of it.

Wingo spent the previous 18 months or so with Molde, transferring there from the Sounders in 2019. As part of that transfer — reportedly for about $250,000 — the Sounders retained a 20% sell-on fee, which means they should collect somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000 in the Ferencvaros transaction.

That qualifies as the second-most valuable transfer by a Sounders Academy product, with DeAndre Yedlin’s move from Tottenham to Newcastle (roughly $6.5 million) the only one that involved a bigger fee.

While a player with Wingo’s skillset would likely be of use to the Sounders right now, this should still be seen as a pretty nice piece of business. Although the Sounders had started Wingo’s transition from the midfield to right back, he was finding playing time hard to come by in Seattle. Over three seasons, he had played less than 500 minutes for the first team. Although he played more like 2,300 minutes for S2 and the Tacoma Defiance, he was often deployed as a midfielder.

The move to Molde not only afforded him the opportunity to get regular first-team minutes, but also to settle into a position. After making just a few cameo appearances in 2019, injuries allowed him to get regular playing time in 2020.

By the time Champions League qualifying began August, he had established himself as a regular starter. Not only did Wingo start 3 of 4 qualifiers, but he also started 4 of 6 Europa League group stage matches. Wingo finished the season with 19 starts and more than 1,800 minutes with two goals and an assist across all competitions as Molde finished second in the Eliteserien.

Wingo will join a Ferencvaros team that currently sits atop Hungary’s top flight — they’re 12-0-2 — and played in Champions League this year after eliminating Molde. Ferencvaros only claimed a single point after being drawn into a group with Barcelona and Juventus, but will likely have a chance to qualify again next year. The state of Washington has never produced a Champions League player, with Wingo and Kasey Keller the only two to have competed in Europa League.