The Loan
Fort Wayne Football Club has added forward Mamadi Jiana on loan from Houston Dynamo 2 of MLS NEXT Pro, the league where MLS clubs run their reserve sides. The path that brought him here is a familiar one for a college forward on the edge of the professional game. Inter Miami selected Jiana 54th overall in the 2026 MLS SuperDraft, and he spent preseason in the same building as Lionel Messi and Luis Suárez before Miami passed on a first-team contract. Houston Dynamo 2 signed him on April 1, where he made seven appearances this season. The loan to Fort Wayne Football Club was announced September 4, and he has since been added to the roster, wearing No. 25.
His background before the draft runs through three colleges and three levels of the college game. Jiana broke in at Division III Norwich, where he scored at a rate that earned him a Division I transfer, spent 2023 at Albany, and finished at Bryant, where he led the line for a team that reached the America East final. He set the program’s single-season records for shots and shots on goal that year, and his seven goals ranked third in the conference. He also spent the last three summers with the Western Mass Pioneers of USL League Two, the same pre-professional league where our club built its identity.
And there is already a connection inside our locker room. Jiana and captain Tiago Dias were teammates twice, first at Albany in 2023, then at Bryant last season. Head coach Mike Avery said the staff tracked Jiana closely through college.
The deal opens a channel the club hasn’t used before. This is Fort Wayne FC’s first loan from a MLS NEXT Pro organization, and Houston Dynamo 2 has spent the season open for business with USL League One. The club loaned midfielder Diego González to Portland Hearts of Pine in June, transferred defender Eiji Hata to the same club outright in August, and has now sent Jiana to Fort Wayne. With a playoff race on and matches stacked through October, our front office judged attacking depth the place to reinforce.
The Defender’s Verdict
By the Numbers
Mamadi Jiana has played 143 professional minutes. That’s the whole competitive sample, and no projection built on this sample size deserves a final verdict. What the sample and the college record agree on is the shape of the player: a striker who shoots early and often, carries the ball at defenders, and finds the target at an elite rate. He set Bryant University’s single-season records for shots and shots on goal, nearly half of everything he hit was on frame, and the same pattern showed up in his limited Houston minutes. The finishing has been average, and that’s the name of the game at the professional level as an attacker. The profile should sound familiar, though. Carrying the ball at defenders and manufacturing shots is the job Lilian Ricol did here before his transfer to San Antonio, and Jiana’s game points at the same job. Whether he can do it in USL League One is what the loan exists to find out.
Projected Role on Fort Wayne FC
This transaction feels very Mike Avery-like. The type of player within the college ranks who has raw talent, and needs a bit of development to reach their full potential. If I was a betting man, I think Jiana comes in as a like-for-like replacement for Lilian Ricol. He’s a different forward than Ryan Becher, and one Fort Wayne FC fans should find exciting, especially when he finds open space. Where he lines up is still an open question; he wasn’t in the squad last Saturday against the Cosmos. If the staff wants to start him wide, he’ll be vying for minutes alongside Kabiru Gafar, Clarence Awoudor, and Jack Thomas. He profiles as the right competitor for anyone on the attacking front line.
A couple relationships are worth mentioning. Dias and Jiana have prior playing experience together, so watching how they communicate from front to back will be interesting. The other is DaMarcus Beasley’s relationship with the Houston Dynamo. Beasley finished his playing career with the club, captaining the Dynamo to its first U.S. Open Cup title in 2018, and he now runs football operations in Fort Wayne as Co-owner. I don’t know whether that history opened this door, but deals like this travel along relationships, and a Director of Football Operations with larger club connections is one of the recruiting differentiators we have in our front office.
Let’s see if he travels to South Carolina this weekend, or if he’s waiting for our next home match in Fort Wayne.
Always FWD