Rumor: ESPN Has Sporting KC Paying over $1 Million for Cesar Inga

Will he, or won’t he? The Cesar Inga to Sporting Kansas City rumors date back to the end of December. And according to his agent, the negotiations have been going on for the duration of December.

Just over a week ago, all seemed lost. Universitario de Deportes’ newly hired coach, Javier Rabanal, stated the team just could not part with Inga. They simply had no time to replace him. Inga’s agent was livid. “Narciso Algamis didn’t hesitate to lash out at the institution and made it clear that the player was frustrated after losing a key opportunity to move abroad,” said a report from Exitosa, a Peruvian outfit. 

Algamis went on to say Inga was upset too. Moves like this don’t come along all the time and his 23-year-old client was under contract and seemingly stuck. Either his agent was playing along with the team to drive up the sale price (and his commission) or the team played hard ball to drive up the transfer fee.

In a report from today, ESPN Peru is stating the deal is done and the fee is over $1 million for Inga to come to Sporting KC. Universitario will also reportedly retain a 15 percent sell-on if Inga is moved again. Another source has the fee at $1.6 million. Then again, maybe they don’t mean dollars and instead mean a Peru Sol, which is about $0.30 on the dollar. One million then could just be $300,000 USD. That’s probably a little optimistic.

If the deal gets done, it’s unlikely we’ll ever know the exact amount that was paid.

Additionally, Sporting KC is unlikely to comment until the ink is dry on the contract. That likely entails a medical for Inga in Kansas City, along with league approval of the deal.

Since Inga is 23, he obviously doesn’t qualify for the U-22 Initiative. That means Sporting KC could use General Allocation Money (GAM) or Targeted Allocation Money (TAM) to buy down his transfer fee and fit him in their budget. They can’t spend this much on every spot on the roster, but they have a ton of flexibility with the amount of open salary budget space they still possess.

If Sporting KC ultimately finalize the deal, there are rumors they beat out multiple teams for his service. How much of those rumors of Watford, Udinese and others actually existed or were just agent/team posturing is unknown.

For more on Inga, check out our original story on him for his background, club history, stats and highlights.

Rumor: Peruvian Fullback Cesar Inga has “caught the eye” of Sporting KC