{"id":155591,"date":"2026-04-02T18:24:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T18:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/155591\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T18:24:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T18:24:07","slug":"philadelphia-union-sign-homegrown-forward-malik-jakupovic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/155591\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia Union sign homegrown forward Malik Jakupovic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TRANSFER TRACKER STATUS: Signing<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/clubs\/philadelphia-union\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Philadelphia Union<\/a> have signed homegrown forward <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/players\/malik-jakupovic\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Malik Jakupovic<\/a>, the club announced Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>The 16-year-old US youth international is under contract through the 2029-2030 season with an option for 2030-31.<\/p>\n<p>Jakupovic has made three appearances with Philadelphia while on short-term call-ups from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlsnextpro.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MLS NEXT Pro<\/a> side Philadelphia Union II. He has 10 goals in 20 appearances with Union II.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Malik has shown great growth since joining our academy, and his maturity at just 16 years old speaks to his professionalism and commitment,&#8221; said Jon Scheer, Philadelphia&#8217;s interim sporting director.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He\u2019s capitalized on his opportunities with Union II, first-team call-ups, and US youth national team appearances, and we look forward to continuing to support his development with the first team.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jakupovic joined the Philadelphia Union Academy in 2023 at age 14.<\/p>\n<p>Last fall, he scored eight goals at the Concacaf U-17 Championship to help the United States qualify for the 2026 FIFA U-17 World Cup.<\/p>\n<p>READ MORE:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/news\/transfer-tracker\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MLS Transfer Tracker<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TRANSFER TRACKER STATUS: Signing The Philadelphia Union have signed homegrown forward Malik Jakupovic, the club announced Thursday. The&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[62378,69,71,70,10227,10226,26410],"class_list":{"0":"post-155591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-malik-jakupovic","9":"tag-philadelphia","10":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","11":"tag-philadelphia-news","12":"tag-philadelphia-union","13":"tag-sendtonews","14":"tag-transfer-tracker"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}