The Moves Keep Falling Through, but Sporting KC have a Ton to Spend

No one thought a complete rebuild of Sporting Kansas City in the offseason would be easy. Least of all new President of Soccer Operations David Lee. Although I’m not sure anyone saw it being this tough and  slow .

When Sporting KC announced their offseason roster moves at the conclusion of their 2025 Major League Soccer season, they retained just four of 17 possible players . They’ve since re-signed one of those players (Ryan Schewe) and added five more (Stefan Cleveland, Cielo Tschantret, Kwaku Agyabeng, Justin Reynolds and Calvin Harris ).

Despite the additions, they still only had 17 players on their roster when they reported to preseason in Florida this past weekend (now 18 with Harris). Despite that, they took 31 players, including three trialists , a draft pick, some SKC II players and a slew of SKC Academy players. Lee will certainly need to sign some of those players just to get to the roster minimum requirements set forth by MLS.

And it’s clear he’s trying to add many more that aren’t in camp.

During the introductory press conference last week for Rapha Wicky, Sporting KC’s new head coach, Lee promised “double digit” additions . One of the problems is, moves keep falling through.

Failed* Moves

When something falls through, there is usually plenty of blame to go around. Sporting KC were rumored to be acquiring left back Cesar Inga from Peru until the team backed out at the last moment. His agent reported back and forth negotiations that went on for a month until the team ultimately decided they couldn’t afford to sell him.

It’s possible that’s a negotiating tactic in itself. There is always a price. But how much does Sporting KC want to allocate from their salary budget to a 23-year-old who just became a regular starter last season? Spending poorly in past years is what got Kansas City into the mess they’ve been trying to drag themselves out of. For what it’s worth, word is the deal may not be dead.

Update 11:59PM: The Inga move to Sporting KC may be going through according to a new report.

Inga wasn’t the only move hasn’t moved forward (yet) that we’ve heard about.

Wednesday, there was a bizarre situation with North Macedonian club FK Vardar and young Ugandan international Rogers Mato. That is definitely a deal that isn’t happening, although the tale is a legendary one that is worth a read.

Sporting KC Put in the Middle of a Bizarre Transfer Situation for Ugandan Forward

There are other rumors that definitely don’t fall under the “failed” category as they may have never been deals. It’s hard to know if Sporting KC even inquired about a player like Brazilian CB Diego Borges, as has been reported by Ben Jacobs. Perhaps they did but never made an offer. As my colleague Mike Kuhn has pointed out, it’s a steep transfer fee for a player who isn’t getting many minutes even in a league like Hungary.

Then there is the Albanian defensive midfielder, Juljan Shehu who we wrote about in the dark times when almost no one had been signed and no rumors were even out there. It was probably never anything more than an inquiry, but we were grasping at straws over here. And those are just the moves we’ve heard about. Lee referenced many more conversations happening when we last spoke with him.

All of this is to say, despite the Sporting KC roster being far from complete, they have a ton of roster spending flexibility that they can play with.

How Much Can SKC Spend?

Figuring out how much money a team has can be an inexact science in MLS. We know what MLS and SKC players made in 2025 , but we don’t know their 2026 salaries yet. Inevitably some of the deals had a built-in raise by 2026.

We also don’t know exactly how much General Allocation Money (GAM) that teams are dealing with. Each team will start with $3,280,000 GAM, if they haven’t already pulled it forward to use last year. We do know they get up to $2,125,000 in Targeted Allocation Money (TAM) they can use (or may have allocated to prior signings like Salloi or Shapi who are over the TAM threshold).

The last time MLS announced available GAM totals, Sporting KC had just over $1 million in September. Since then, they traded $50,000 for Stefan Cleveland and potentially more for Chicago Fire right back Justin Reynolds, but it appears to all be conditional.

Team’s also get GAM each season for missing the playoffs (who knows how much), making the CONCACAF Champions Cup (not an issue for SKC) and if they don’t carry a third DP (they split it with other two DP or less teams). Plus, Sporting KC could have future GAM coming to them from trades over the last years we’ve all since forgotten about.

Add to all that, if Sporting KC stick with two Designated Players all year, they’ll get another $2,000,000 in GAM. If they sign a third in the summer, chop that total in half.

This doesn’t even factor in the players who are off the roster. Sporting KC parted with 12 players in the offseason and Dany Rosero before they got to the end of the year. Those players combined had a total guaranteed compensation of $8,752,857.

Of course, we don’t know what the new additions are being paid. Here are the players who were in MLS last year and their salaries from 2025.

Kwaku Agyabeng is a Generation adidas player, so he’s off the books. Cielo Tschantret is a Homegrown, so he’s likely on a minimum deal. Reynolds’ minimum salary should jump to at least the $113,400 for 2026. Cleveland signed a new two-year contract so there is no telling what he’s being paid, but he also has never been a regular starter in MLS. Calvin Harris was on his rookie Generation adidas deal which has expired, so he was likely due to raise.

Wildly Simplified Math

In the end, the math is all overly simplified. There is so much nuance I’m leaving out, and frankly you probably don’t want to read. MLS roster rules are complex and there is also the factor of where a player sits on the roster and if they count against the salary budget at all.

But in the simplest terms, Sporting KC have a ton of budget space to spend . Looking back at past deals from the prior regime, they didn’t spend it wisely. Even though things aren’t progressing as fast as the fans, David Lee and basically everyone associated with SKC would like, there is still room for optimism.

If Lee can get some deals over the line and hit on a few of them, there is a real potential to turn this team around. They are very unlikely to hit the ground running with as late as players are going to be coming in, but they absolutely have the budget to add a ton of talent to the roster.

We’ll see if everyone’s patience can hold out long enough for that to happen.