Kansas City, Missouri (November 27th, 2017)- Sporting KC announced that they will move on from six players, while picking up 11 roster options for the 2018 season. The move comes thanks to the league-wide Player Option deadline for teams no longer participating in games for the rest of 2017.
Sporting KC Roster Moves: 11 Options Picked Up, Move on from Six
Sporting KC announced that they wouldn’t be re-signing Cameron Porter and Erik Palmer Brown. Palmer-Brown is set for a free transfer to Manchester City in the January window. Sporting KC will retain Palmer-Brown’s MLS rights, while Cameron Porter is now eligible in the MLS Waiver Draft.
Sporting will also decline the contract options of Cameron Iwasa, Soni Mustivar, Tyler Pasher, and Kevin Oliveira. Cameron Iwasa and Tyler Pasher never broke into the first team, and Pasher spent most of 2017 playing with USL affiliate Swope Park Rangers. Mustivar saw his minutes get cut from 2095 to 260.
Kevin Oliveira ended up getting signed to help out in the attack as many players were having injury issues during the final run in. Oliveira, Iwasa, and Pasher, will all be available in the MLS Waiver Draft, and Soni Mustivar will be available in the MLS Re-Entry Draft.
What This Means
Sporting KC now has 25 players under contract for the 2018 season, with nine of them out of contract after the 2018 season. That list of nine includes: Graham Zusi, Tim Melia, Matt Besler, Seth Sinovic, Roger Espinoza, and Benny Feilhaber. A significant part of the core could potentially move on at the end of the 2018 season which means that 2018 could be a last hurrah for the most successful core of players in the club’s history. This also means that there will potentially be a whole lot of turnover after the 2018 season.
The other thing this means is that Sporting KC freed up a chunk of change to work with this offseason, roughly 500k. That’s not even dipping into the Dom Dwyer money to spend elsewhere. That’s a really nice thing to be able to work with for 2018, meaning they can add their stated goals of a big time number 10 (attacking midfielder) and a big time number 9. They can do that, add another center back to help with depth thanks to the departure of Palmer-Brown, and probably still have some change. They can help tool-up in areas around the field, making the potential turnover blow after the 2018, a little bit softer.
