KANSAS CITY, KAN. (December 18, 2018)- Sporting KC announced the acquisition of a new defender. They’ve signed Hungarian, Botond Bar\u00e1th, to a two year deal with an option for 2021.<\/p>\n
Bar\u00e1th has spent his entire career at Hungarian club, Honv\u00e9d. The 26 year old has scored 12 goals and made 13 assists in his career with the club. He has experience all over the back line, with the bulk of his appearances coming as a left back or center back. 80 appearances in the middle, and 70 on the left, Bar\u00e1th brings an added level of versatility as a defender that Sporting KC may have thought they were going to get with Brad Evans in 2017. Health kept him from fulfilling that role.<\/p>\n
Bar\u00e1th’s depth is defenitely needed for Sporting KC as not only are they a month behind all teams who missed the playoffs in terms of offseason rest, they’re going to experience more fixture congestion, and a much longer season than most. They’ll open CONCACAF Champions League play before they even begin MLS Play.<\/p>\n
Bar\u00e1th fills Sporting’s desire to have four center backs that are capable of starting at any point, according to a club spokesperson. They believe they’ll need to rotate the back line a lot more in 2018 as the schedule becomes pretty congested in 2019.<\/p>\n
He’ll join Ike Opara, Matt Besler, and Andreu Font\u00e1s on the CB depth chart, and could be an option at left back as well. He did not require a transfer fee as his contract was up with Honv\u00e9d at the end of the year.<\/p>\n
Bar\u00e1th has already played 16 times in the Hungarian top flight this year, also scoring in Honv\u00e9d’s Europa League Qualifying campaign.<\/p>\n
Very rarely do you find a highlight video that shows the offensive exploits of a defender, but here is one if you want to fill that void in your life:<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hfiML6VJkR8&t=2s<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KANSAS CITY, KAN. (December 18, 2018)- Sporting KC announced the acquisition of a new defender. They’ve signed Hungarian, Botond Bar\u00e1th, to a two year deal with an option for 2021. Sporting KC sign Botond Bar\u00e1th Bar\u00e1th has spent his entire career at Hungarian club, Honv\u00e9d. The 26 year old has scored 12 goals and made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":361,"featured_media":20003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,19],"tags":[2717,233],"class_list":["post-20492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-skc","tag-botond-barath","tag-sporting-kc"],"modified_by":"Daniel Sperry, Staff Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/361"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}