It may seem petty to re-hash two years after the fact, but Denis Hamlett never actually said he expected an “immediate impact” out of then-newly-signed striker Mathias Jørgensen.
Before embarking on a largely-fruitless two seasons in New York, mostly playing in the reserves before making a quiet loan exit to AGF Aarhus at the end of last year, Jørgensen’s signing was the great hope of an otherwise barren offseason in which the only signings made by the New York Red Bulls had been MLS waiver flyers such as Amro Tarek and Marcus Epps. But what the club hoped would serve as narrative-turning moment of transfer success now lives on as a moment of infamy due not, as commonly thought, to comments by Hamlett himself, but likely due to a headline - “Hamlett: Jørgensen Ready To Make Immediate Impact” - used in a paraphrased club media statement released with the transfer announcement.