In a week in which Mark Warburton made his return to football – or ‘soccer’, as they tend to call it in his new Jacksonville home – it feels like a good time to reminisce about some of the players he brought to Rangers.
While there is certainly a coherency and a consistency to Rangers’ transfer policy these days – Vaclav Cerny is a rare exception to Nils Koppen’s rule regarding young, ambitious, hungry talent – the Warburton days were a lot more, well, difficult to decipher.
There were grizzled veterans. See Joey Barton, Niko Kranjcar, Clint Hill and Philippe Senderos. There were opportunistic, affordable additions from south of the border. Jordan Rossiter and Josh Windass.
And, in the month before Mark Warburton got the boot at Ibrox, two exciting young midfielders brought in on loan from the Premier League.
Eight years on, former Arsenal starlet Jon Toral is earning a living in India. He moved to Mumbai City last summer after a spell in Cyprus. And while Toral is embracing a new challenge in a new continent, it’s safe to say this is not where he imagined spending his peak years when rising through the ranks at La Masia and becoming one of the brightest talents in Barcelona’s academy.
But at least Toral has a contract. At least he has a club. That is more than can be said for Emerson Hyndman.
- READ MORE: The Best Rangers Loan Signings of All-Time
Emerson Hyndman was labelled a ‘phenomenal’ talent while at Rangers
Two years Toral’s junior, Hyndman – at 28 – is another who really should be operating at the pinnacle of his powers right now.
And lest we forget just how bright the future appeared back in 2017. Born in Dallas, Texas – 1,000 miles east of Mark Warburton’s Floridian surroundings as the head of soccer at Sporting Club Jacksonville – Hyndman arrived at Rangers having already earned two senior USA caps as a teenager.
And, after four goals in 13 Premiership matches from January to June, Hyndman’s impact so so impressive, so immediate, that he would claim Rangers’ Young Player of the Year award despite only arriving halfway through the 2016/17 campaign.
“Emerson is just phenomenal,” former USA boss and German legend Jurgen Klinsmann told Scottish Sun at the time. “He was barely 18 [when I first saw him]. I said to my coach; ‘Are you seeing what I’m seeing?’ Everyone was like ‘Woah.’”
When Hyndman made his return to America with Atlanta United two years later, meanwhile, his then-coach Frank de Boer – brother of Rangers icon Ronald – could not speak highly enough of a one-time USMNT youth-team skipper.
“I think he’s a quality player,” De Boer said. “He can play as a box-to-box player. He’s a player that is always on the move.
“I like what I saw and what he’s showing right now on the training pitch is also quite good. So, it’s a quality addition for our roster.”
Hyndman a free-agent after Memphis 901 are dissolved
Flash forward to March 2025. The Major League Soccer season is four games in, and yet Hyndman is nowhere to be seen.
After a cruciate ligament tear and a serious hamstring injury ruled Hyndman out for almost two years – he would make just 16 MLS appearances between June 2021 and July 2023 – his contract was terminated.
A year later, after only four outings for Memphis 901 FC in America’s second tier, Hyndman would again be cut loose, though through a development completely out of his hands. Memphis 901 folded in November, their rights transferred to Santa Barbara Sky FC.
In the four months since then, meanwhile, Hyndman is yet to find employment anywhere else. Whether Santa Barbara offer him a route back into professional football, only time will tell.
But, in a land where Freddy Adu will forever be viewed as the perfect example of wasted potential, Emerson Hyndman’s own story is also in danger of having a pretty tragic end.
