All anyone wanted to talk about was the bicycle kick.
In the final seconds against the Chicago Fire on March 2, 2025, Jacob Murrell, a 6-foot-3 McDonogh and Georgetown product, pulled off an astonishing feat of athleticism for D.C. United. The cross came in and Murrell’s instincts took over. He flipped his right leg over his head and connected cleanly, sending the ball looping over the opposing goalkeeper into the net.
A bicycle kick, in stoppage time, to salvage a 2-2 draw. For the then-20-year-old, it was an early career highlight.
“It’ll probably be the best goal I ever score in my life,” Murrell admits now. “If I can top it at some point, that would be incredible. But with the circumstances of the last kick of the game, bicycle kick into the far corner … it’s going to be hard to beat.”
Nearly a year later, clips of the goal still bounce around social media. It’s one of the first things you see when you search his name. Murrell, though, still just 21 years old, is trying to write a different story as he kicks off his third MLS season against the Philadelphia Union at Audi Field on Feb. 21. Murrell, a native of Forest Hill, will get a chance to play close to home when United plays Inter Miami at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore on March 7.
“I’ve done a good job getting my feet wet the first two years,” said Murrell, who was drafted No. 7 overall in the 2024 MLS Super Draft. “But I still think I have room to break on the scene. I don’t want to just be this role player who does whatever the team needs. I want to have a breakout season and help the team more than just filling a role here and there.”
* * *
Murrell entered his rookie year in 2024 eager to make his mark on a young team dotted with seasoned pros, including star striker Christian Benteke, whom Murrell called a great teammate and top professional.
But despite their good rapport, the pecking order was clear. Benteke, who racked up close to 100 goals in his Premier League career, was the obvious No. 1 striker. Murrell’s playing time was minimal in the first two months, logging just 92 minutes in five appearances.
On April 27, 2024, head coach Troy Lesesne named the youngster to his first starting XI alongside Benteke. Murrell played 75 minutes against Seattle. A week later against Philadelphia, Murrell was again rewarded with a start and made the most of it by scoring his first career goal, a sweet strike from outside the box.
By season’s end, he had amassed six starts across 27 appearances, finishing with three assists to go with his lone goal. Working in such close confines with an elite striker benefited Murrell enormously, explained his former head coach at McDonogh, Brandon Quaranta.
“He’s had a great start with great goals, consistently playing,” Quaranta said of Murrell’s first two seasons. “He’s been behind a tremendous striker, leading scorer. Being a young forward behind Christian is tough, but every time he’s taken his chance.”
In the final game of the 2024 season, D.C. United, which had been a fringe playoff team all year, still had a chance to qualify for its first postseason berth since 2019. Facing Charlotte FC, Murrell was eager to help his team break the playoff drought. But as the final whistle blew on a crushing 3-0 loss, Murrell’s name hadn’t been called.
Murrell was angry. He returned home to Forest Hill, but instead of taking time to rest his body after a grueling season, he got straight back to training. He thought throwing himself back into the work would help him exorcise the demons of a failed season. While well-intentioned, that lack of rest came back to bite him, Murrell said.
“After that game, I had so much anger. I was just so frustrated, upset that I didn’t get an opportunity to go in and try and help the team. It was supposed to be a great moment for the club,” Murrell said. “Going into that offseason, I took that anger with me, which can sometimes be a good thing, but I think it was immature of me to not take time off in the offseason leading into my second year.”
Murrell struggled mentally and physically throughout 2025, he said. His stats don’t reflect a dip, however. In fact, they remained nearly identical to his rookie year: 24 appearances, seven starts and 865 minutes, just one fewer minute than he played in 2024. But the season wore on him.
“Burnout is a real thing, and I think that’s something I faced a lot last year,” Murrell said. “It was just because I didn’t take the proper time in the offseason to get away from soccer for a few weeks before getting back into my hard training. And so that lack of time away, I think, affected me.”
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With two full seasons behind him, Murrell didn’t treat this winter like he had the offseason before.
After United wrapped up a last-place finish (5-11-18) in the Eastern Conference, Murrell took two weeks off. He took a road trip with friends, attended an Alabama-LSU football game, doing everything but kick a soccer ball.
As offseason training began, he split time between Baltimore and Florida, where he worked with former U.S. internationals Geoff Cameron and Brek Shea.
“This was my first offseason doing stuff with them. They had a good group of MLS and NWSL players in for a little offseason camp right before preseason, which was at a good level,” Murrell said. “The intensity is just a lot better than doing individual work or small group work on my own.”
But it wasn’t just about finding better runs with tougher competition. This offseason was different because Murrell was different.
“I’ve done a lot more this offseason in the weight room and just from a fitness perspective of running,” he said. “Another big change I’ve made since then is my diet and just the things I’m putting in my body.”
At Georgetown, and even as a rookie, he’d eat like most young athletes do — without much thought.
“I kind of would just eat whatever,” he said. “Didn’t really pay too much attention to it. Now my diet’s a lot better. It’s not like I was eating cake every day, but I wasn’t conscious. Now, I’m trying to keep all my meals to whole foods and get with the trainers on supplements and protein powders. Whatever I’m putting in my body is thought through now, not just, ‘I’m hungry, I’ll eat this.'”
* * *
Coming into MLS, Murrell was a winner at every level.
At Georgetown, he scored 18 goals across two seasons and could have returned for his junior season to contend for a national title, but he chased his pro dreams instead. At McDonogh, under Quaranta, Murrell was named the 2021-22 Gatorade National Boys Soccer Player of the Year and scored a combined 83 goals as a junior and senior.
All those goals and accolades meant nothing in the professional game. Murrell is honest about this: He wasn’t ready for the mental grind of an MLS season. A tough training session here, a bad game there, weeks in which the ball doesn’t bounce the way you think it will.
“It can really throw off your mental and your confidence,” Murrell said. “I think I’m a lot more equipped now to deal with those things and stay level-headed and not let it affect me as much. Everyone’s going to have bad days. Success isn’t linear, as any athlete knows.”
Quaranta knows how Murrell has adapted. He stays in touch with his former player to talk soccer, life and everything else. Murrell still returns to McDonogh to promote the program and meet incoming families.
“You don’t know until you know,” Quaranta said of Murrell’s struggles. “At the pro level, my guess is you have to know how to manage your days and weeks — long road trips, multi-level competitions with games mid-week. You need to rely on the guys ahead of you. … And now he’s in his third year, he knows more than he did at the beginning. Before you know it, he will be a veteran.”
In addition to his reworked diet and group training sessions, Murrell has employed a series of mental preparations to avoid the burnout that plagued him last season. Twice a day, he journals to set intentions and reflects on them later. He does visualization before games, both the night prior and on the drive to the stadium, imagining himself scoring, creating chances, influencing the game.
And he’s begun experimenting with meditation. The mental mantra he keeps coming back to is “having the mind of a goldfish.”
“Just forget about things that have happened in the past,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Miss a chance, score a great goal, whatever it is — I’m so much better when I’m confident. A lot of that confidence comes from the work I’ve done in the offseason.”
That includes not getting caught in the glow of that goal.
“It happened a year ago now,” he says. “It’s a great memory, but I’m trying to move past it and find new things that define me.”
Photo Credit: Hannah Wagner/D.C. United
Issue 297: February / March 2026
Originally published Feb. 18, 2026