In Career Mode: unable to renew or sign contract with any team - is it over?

I've seen similar issues others have had with this in Career mode that have gotten patched - maybe last in November '23? But my issue is slightly different that clearly hasn't been patched. My player got a 5 month injury not allowing me to fulfill all objectives with my current team, thus not allowing me to do a contract renewal. Stupid, but OK. However, it's also - for one reason or another - not allowing me to sign with ANY team and now I'm just stuck at the end of the season on the contract signing page - with no team to sign to. I tried a reload, sign out, restart, etc and even tried to transfer before the end of the season came up - which worked...until again, I got to this page with no option to continue on to the next season. Over 140 hrs into this career to come to a complete, sorry and bitterly frustrating end. PLEASE patch this so I can continue to be American Messi!

*screenshots attached because this doesn't support video