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Rumor: Sporting KC “Nearing Deal” to Sign Spanish Midfielder

Have Sporting Kansas City found their Designated Player #10? Tom Bogert of Give Me Sport and Daniel Sperry can confirm interest.

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Credit: Thad Bell

Throughout the offseason, there has been a lot of consternation from Sporting Kansas City fans. It sometimes feels like all the other teams are making signings and KC are sitting idly by, despite their message being Mike Burns is at work! While there have been a couple rumors this offseason, this is the first one from known MLS insider Tom Bogert of Give Me Sport.

🔵🇪🇸 Sources: Sporting KC nearing deal to sign Spanish midfielder Manu Garcia from Greek club Aris. All sides hoping to finalize soon.Garcia, 27, had 4g/2a in 18 league appearances this year. Mostly played as CAM this year. One cap with Spain.🤝 Ilias Kallonas

Tom Bogert (@tombogert.bsky.social) 2025-01-21T21:13:05.060Z

Bogert says, “Sporting KC nearing deal to sign Spanish midfielder Manu Garcia from Greek club Aris. All sides hoping to finalize soon.”

The KC Star’s Daniel Sperry confirmed the rumor and added that the team is looking for a fee in the neighborhood of $4 million.

Garcia plays for Aris Thessaloniki from the Greek first division. They currently sit at sixth place in a 14-team league.

Transfermarkt lists Garcia as a midfielder who primarily plays attacking midfielder but has spent time deeper in the midfield and as a left winger. TM also lists his current value at €3 million (approx. $3.13m USD).

More About Manu Garcia

Manu just turned 27-years-old at the beginning of January, so he’s a young 27. He was part of the Manchester City (England) youth setup after coming over from Sporting Gijon (Spain). If you are familiar with how City operate, they tend to loan young players out over and over. Because of that, Garcia has had quite a few stops, including Deportivo Alaves B (Spanish 4th tier), NAC Breda (Dutch first tier) and FC Toulouse (French first tier).

In 2019, Garcia was sold back to Sporting Gijon. He spent time on loan with Alaves (Spanish 1st division) before being sold to Aris Thessaloniki in the summer 0f 2022 for approximately €3.20m.

This season, Garcia has made 18 appearances (1,446 minutes), scoring four goals and adding two assists. In the 2023-24 season he only made seven appearances (261 minutes) and had a single assist.  2022-23 was more successful with 17 appearances (1,143 minutes), four goals and two assists. That is, until he got hurt.

He missed significant time with a knee injury that year. The injury caused him to miss about half that season and lingered into the next season (hence the limited minutes in his middle season in the Greek Super League). He’s now nearly two years removed from that major injury.

In his loan season in the Spanish top flight (La Liga), he had no goals and a single assist according to FBref. Perhaps his most successful season was in 2019-20 at Sporting Gijon when he played 40 matches (37 starts) for 3,065 minutes while adding three goals and eight assists.

Garcia is also a Spanish international. He only had one cap for the senior team, but he featured more extensively in their youth setup.

Budget Fit

If this is true, and Tom gets more rumors right than he gets wrong, Garcia would likely be a DP. He’s under contract through the summer of 2026 so a transfer fee would be required to peel him off Aris’ roster. An in prime 27-year-old attacking mid likely isn’t going to come cheap.

We won’t know his official roster designation until he is signed. All signs point to him being a Designated Player if the move gets over the line.

Highlights

Here are a few highlight videos of Garcia.

What are your initial thoughts on the Spaniard? Weigh in down below in the comments.

I've been covering Kansas City soccer since 2014, including Sporting Kansas City, the KC Current, SKC II and more. I'm based out of Kansas City, MO, but got my start covering SKC while writing from Phoenix, AZ.

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