What is the Minimum Sporting KC Needs to do to be Roster Compliant

It’s February and the Major League Soccer season is right around the corner. Sporting Kansas City kicks off on the road against the San Jose Earthquakes in just 20 days. 19 days from now is the roster compliance deadline. When anyone hears about that day, it’s usually because a team has too many players on their roster or too many of a certain designation (U22 Initiative, Designated Players, International slots, etc.) and they need to get compliant.

That is not what is happening with Sporting KC.

No, the club that straddles the state line between Missouri and Kansas is well below another line: minimum number of rostered players. It’s something very rarely seen in MLS. Sporting KC have just 18 players under contract for the 2026 MLS season. 18 happens to be the minimum number of players a team needs on their Senior Roster in order to begin the season.

Today, let’s look at where Sporting KC likely stands in hitting that mark and what they will need to do in the next three weeks.

What is a Senior Roster?

Major League Soccer has complicated rules. Designated Players. U22 Initiative players. Young DPs. Allocation Money. Discovery Rights. The list goes on and on. One of the rules is around where guys fit on the roster and who counts against the salary budget (it’s not a cap, hence all those weird rules). To understand, we have to look at the MLS Roster Rules. We’ll have to reference 2025, because MLS hasn’t formally announced their 2026 rules yet, but we do know some of the salary budget charge increases for this year since they are laid out in the CBA.

The Senior Roster is the first 18 to 20 spots on the roster. These are the only ones that formally count against the MLS salary budget limit, which is set to $6,425,000 for 2026. 

Teams will be charged for 18 slots, even if they don’t have 18 players. Right now, Sporting KC are nowhere near 18 Senior Roster slots because many of their players are on the Supplemental or Reserve Supplemental Roster.

Wait, what is the Supplemental Roster?

After the first 18-20 players fill out the Senior Roster, spots 21-31 are on the Supplemental Roster. In truth, it breaks down even more than that. Slots 21-24 must be on the Senior Minimum Salary ($113,400 in 2026) and slots 25-31 can be on the Reserve Minimum Salary ($88,025 in 2026). That 31st slot is reserved for a player on a season-long loan to a lower division. Jack Kortkamp is a player that might fit that mold, as he could go to Sporting KC II all season to free up space. Right now, though, space isn’t an issue for SKC.

Where does SKC fit into this?

As mentioned, Sporting KC have 18 players on their entire roster. Of those players, there are only six players we know for sure that have to be on the Senior Roster: Dejan Joveljic, Manu Garcia, Daniel Salloi, Shapi Suleymanov, Jake Davis and John Pulskamp. The club signed two more players, that based on past salaries, almost certainly will have to be on the Senior Roster (Stefan Cleveland and Calvin Harris).

That’s just eight players. That means only eight players are making more than the minimum league salary. Probably.

Then there are more guys who are known to be on Senior Minimum deals or very likely are based on past knowledge: Zorhan Bassong, Stephen Afrifa, Justin Reynolds and Kwaku Agyabeng. Guys that are on the Senior Minimum salary can be moved back and forth between the first four spots of the Supplemental Roster and the Senior Roster. If we slot all of them into the Senior Roster, that brings the team to 12 players in those spots.

The other six signed players, if they didn’t have built in raises, are on the Reserve Supplemental Roster: Jansen Miller, Ian James, Jacob Bartlett, Jack Kortkamp, Ryan Schewe and (likely) Cielo Tschantret. Players like Miller or Bartlett, based on their massive minute output in 2025, may be due raises. If no one gets a raise, they cannot fill any of the minimum six spots we still believe to be open.

What does Sporting KC Need to Do?

Of course, they need to sign players. They have an immense amount of available funds to add to their roster. And by all accounts, they are trying, the deals just seem to be falling through at an unprecedented rate.

But do they technically have to sign players? A cursory reading of the rules seems to show they’ll simply be charged $113,400 for each of the unfilled roster slot up to the 18 minimum senior players. It might be better to simply leave those spots open than to force round pegs into square holes and further hamper the ability to sign players in this window, or the coming windows. 

Will it come to that? Almost certainly it will not. The team has three players on trial who have played in all their preseason games so far. It’s almost certain they’ll sign some, if not all of them. The club has no official left backs on the roster, so Jayden Reid has started all three preseason games and would seem to have a path to the roster. If not him, then their second first-round draft pick Nikos Clarke-Tosczak also plays left back. 

The team only has two signed CBs (Miller and James) so the other two trialists, Wyatt Meyer and Ethan Bartlow could earn a deal. Not to mention, one of the many rumors or a player that isn’t rumored, will surely sign in the coming days/weeks. Then again, we’ve been saying that for over a month.

What is clear to me, is that David Lee, Mike Burns and whoever else is in the front office are trying to get deals across the line. The comments from Sporting KC fans around the internet think the club is being cheap or not trying. I don’t think that’s true at all. Why are all the deals not working out? I’m not certain. It’s weird. But I feel confident in saying they are trying.

This team potentially needs starter level signings at almost all positions on the roster. If those start coming in, who knows how things will go. If they don’t, it’s going to be a long season.