The Pirates Penned Sands: James Sands to St. Pauli(olf NYCFC)

No updates on Sands himself, but yesterday's results confirm that Holstein Kiel will join Bochum in BL2 next season.

Heidenheim's unexpected victory over Union Berlin brings them to within 2 points of St. Pauli but on a vastly inferior GD with one game left. St. Pauli need a single point from today's game (Eintracht, away) or at home on the final day against already-relegated Bochum to stay up

Having secured 6 points from the last 5 games, you'd expect them to see it through. Sands is very likely to be a BL1 player come August

 

NYCFC announces that James Sands has extended his loan to St. Paul through the upcoming 2025/26 Bundesliga season
- Sands played very well for St. Pauli before suffering an ugly season-ending ankle injury pic.twitter.com/tixIJqG2Cd

— Brian Sciaretta (@BrianSciaretta) May 20, 2025

 

can you screenshot tweets, or just post text. I get “not a valid ID”, can’t see the tweets.

 

bshredder is posting a tweet from someone named Brian Sciaretta reporting that “NYCFC announces that James Sands has extended his loan to St. Paul through the upcoming 2025/26 Bundesliga season - Sands played very well for St. Pauli before suffering an ugly season-ending ankle injury”

 

NYCFC announces that James Sands has extended his loan to St. Paul through the upcoming 2025/26 Bundesliga season
Sands played very well for St. Pauli before suffering an ugly season-ending ankle injury

 

With the injury you couldn't blame St. Pauli if they let the loan expire. That they are extending it shows they have full faith in him. A class act.

 

Good on them. Risky move on their part. Hopefully he comes back at or close to 100%. We'll see where he goes from there

 

It's in their best interest. He played well & is already running, a few months away from the season.

 

FWIW, I sometimes have to do a "hard refresh" in order to get these to load. In most browsers, that's done by holding down SHIFT while hitting "CMD/CTRL + R".

 

I wonder how much of next season he misses... if any?

I recall it being a nasty injury.

 

"fractured fibula and torn MCL" is what NYCFC announced back when it happened. He underwent emergency surgery to fix the fibula. A fractured fibula alone is like 4-6 months, but the compound injury (knee + ankle) probably complicates things? IDK, I'm not a doctor, but given how long it takes basketball players to recover from ankle injuries that require surgery, I would be surprised if he's fit by the start of the season.

edit: The Athletic article about his renewal says this at the very end:

Unclear if they're speculating too, or if this is something the club has said as well.

 

I think he was much better for NYCFC when he made the decision to become a full-time midfielder and only play central defense if there was a clear necessity.

He told me that at the start of the 2024 season, he told NYCFC he wanted to focus entirely on the midfield and that to NYCFC's credit, they agreed and worked with him.

His versatility was useful, but platooning between central defense and defensive midfield hurt his ability to reach his potential.

On another note, it is the exact same problem with Max Dietz who also floats between central defense and defensive midfield at Greuther Furth. He needs to pick one and move on.

 

Would that apply to Ledezma as well in terms of whether a final decision on him being RB or a CM/CAM going forward?

 

maybe, but I don’t think so. Sands floated between two positions his entire career. Richie only started to play right back recently, and I don’t think he has any interest in doing it beyond this season.

Richie really had all the time to become fully developed as a CAM with no distractions of another position. Sands never became fully developed at one position until just last year.