Nkosi Tafari

Nkosi Tafari reached Major League Soccer by way of the college game rather than a club academy, spending his early college years at the University of Connecticut before finishing at Seattle University, where he was named the Western Athletic Conference's Defensive Player of the Year in 2019 and helped the team to the WAC regular-season title. FC Dallas took him 14th overall in the 2020 MLS SuperDraft, and he spent his first two professional seasons partly out on loan at USL League One side North Texas SC, where he scored twice in eight appearances before establishing himself back in Dallas.

Across five seasons with FC Dallas, Tafari made 107 league appearances and scored seven goals. The clearest of them came on 26 August 2023, when his 96:49 winner against Austin FC stands as the latest game-winning goal in the club's history. In January 2025, Dallas traded him to Los Angeles FC in a deal that sent $300,000 in General Allocation Money and an international roster slot back the other way.

Tafari has yet to add a major trophy to his career, joining LAFC after both the club's 2022 MLS Cup and 2023 Leagues Cup triumphs had already been won. He received his first call-up to the United States national team in January 2024 for a training camp and friendly against Slovenia, though he stayed on the bench.