Yesterday evening, D.C. United midfielder Russell Canouse announced to the world via Twitter that he has passed his Virginia real estate exam, and is now going to sling some houses in his spare time. Canouse is very good at playing midfielder in Major League Soccer — just ask Atlanta United! — so he’s probably going to be a monster as selling houses, too. 

Naturally, this got me thinking about some of the other players on the team, and careers outside of soccer that may suit them. I therefore decided to select four players and choose alternative (or “additional," if you’re Canouse, but not everybody has that much energy) careers for them based on position, tactical tendencies, career history, and personality. 

Here you go:

1. Bill Hamid: Mayor of a major U.S. city

The Black-and-Red keeper boasts unflappable energy, a super loud voice, and an indefinable charisma. When he’s playing soccer, he obviously does a pretty damn good job commanding his defense, so he knows how to position others and delegate people to be in the right place at the right time. He’s good at crisis management. He has some international experience, but not too much. 

In fact, Bill probably has the kind of personality and charisma to be POTUS if he really wanted to, but he decides that the grind of local, city politics is where he can exert the most positive influence. 

I’m thinking his native D.C. or maybe a city like Chicago. 

2. Junior Moreno: Night manager at an international five-star hotel

Junior is one of the nicest guys out there. When I interviewed him after the Tampa Bay Rowdies game, he was extremely shy about his English skills but he pretty much was able to understand and answer everything back to me in English all the same. Basically what I’m getting at is that Junior has this sort of understated way about him that makes you feel like there’s a whole lot of complexity beneath the surface.

Did you see that show The Night Manager? I thought it was very good, and I’m imagining a similar situation with Junior. He’s the night manager at a five-star hotel in, let’s say, Geneva or Paris or Dubai, a really important international crossroads, and he comes off as all humble and friendly (which he truly is) but at the same time he’s pulling a bunch of strings in the world of global politics. 

3. Frederic Brillant: Criminal Intelligence Analyst, Interpol

I love crime fiction, and one of the most endearing qualities about a protagonist detective is wit — simple and wonderful wit. Frederic not only boasts copious globetrotting experience after playing in Belgium and the United States, but the Frenchman has a sly cleverness about him that would suit a role like this. He’s also got good size and muscle, so he could be in a suit but also go on some crazy car chase scene or bust a drug smuggling operation or something.

4. Luciano Acosta: Painter

I imagine Lucho with an open-air studio in somewhere like Corsica. He's creative. He does things with the soccer ball that are astounding, so the same would probably be true for the brush. 

He paints in oil, not acrylic. He’s a little bit solitary but he travels about to various exhibitions, often in Paris, and he boasts a touch with the brush that nobody can quite pin down. There’s a unique magic about him. He’s got really particular habits about his work process, like maybe he gets up at 3:30 AM and listens to Richard Wagner for exactly 55 minutes, drinking a cup of coffee, before starting to paint.

I for one look forward to what these guys do!