Sporting KC
Official: Sporting KC Trading Salloi to Toronto FC
In a stunning move, Sporting Kansas City may have traded away one of their first starting quality players on the precipice of the season starting.
Update 6:51PM: Sporting KC have made it official. They retain a sell on percentage as well.
The Athletic’s Tom Bogert had stunning news for Sporting Kansas City fans on Thursday morning. The longest tenured player on Sporting KC’s roster, Daniel Salloi, is rumored to be getting traded to Toronto FC.
The package, per Bogert, is $300,000 in General Allocation Money (GAM) with another $700,000 in add-ons.
🔴 BREAKING: Toronto FC is finalizing a deal to acquire winger Daniel Salloi from Sporting KC, per sources.Deal is $300k GAM + $700k add-ons. Salloi is NOT a DP for Toronto.Salloi, 29, made 286 apps for SKC, scoring 67 goals. Been in first team since 2017.
— Tom Bogert (@tombogert.bsky.social) 2026-02-19T15:54:55.386Z
The move comes as a shock for a Sporting KC team that is anything but roster compliant with the deadline looming tomorrow, February 20th. Before the trade, SKC only had 21 players on their roster, including the yet-to-arrive Lasse Berg Johnsen who was announced yesterday and the club are waiting on his P-1 visa.
Immediate Reaction
Salloi was entering a contract year for Sporting KC, having signed just over a decade ago as the league’s first international Homegrown. The Hungarian native moved to Kansas City and played briefly for the SKC Academy before joining the first team.
In preseason, he had been trying a new role as a shadow striker underneath Dejan Joveljic. They seemed to be finding some chemistry by the final preseason game and combined for a beautiful goal.
Salloi seals it late! 2-0 SKC! #SportingKC #SKCvATX
— Chad Smith (@chadcsmith.bsky.social) 2026-02-14T19:56:19.113Z
At 29-years-old, Salloi appeared to still be in his prime. He often wore the captain’s armband last season and with the departure of Erik Thommy, he may have been inline to become the captain of the team. Now, it appears he’ll head to Canada to help Toronto’s rebuild.
If Sporting KC get the full $1 million in GAM on the trade, it’s a good return for a player who may have left for free after the season. However, with the lack of players on the roster, it could make 2026 an even more challenging season as Salloi was undoubtably one of the best players on the team.
In his 10 MLS seasons, Salloi has 242 appearances, 189 starts, 17,338 minutes, 54 goals and 32 assists in league play.
The KC Soccer Journal will bring you more on this move when we have it. We’re unable to independently confirm this rumor at this time.
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Yeah, don’t mind Salloi being gone, but timing is definitely weird. And $1 million can’t actually play in a game.
But maybe it can actually play! Maybe that’s our roster building strategy. Throwing actual money all over the field.
Haha, distract the other team. They are picking up bucks and KC run right by them 🙂
He is somewhat of the last regime to go. It seems the last few years he has not been as big of an impact player as we hoped he would be. It will be really strange to see him go. He had been part of the team for a decade plus in some form or fashion.
This team is going through a wild change. It is what fans asked for, the ownership is doing that and it will have its growing pains. But I am looking forward to what the future holds. I know it was only preseason, the fact they won a couple was an encouraging and a move in the right direction.
Here is to SKC 3.0?
I agree with you here. If some of the rumored signings happen, it would be likely that Daniel would have just seen the bench. It was probably time for him to move on especially while he is still in his prime.
I like the sound of SKC 3.
stupid question, but is this gonna be the extra short season? because they are switching to fall-spring?
This is the last full Spring-Fall season.
It should have been, because it’d make a lot more sense for the World Cup to be the big punctuation mark between the old season format and the new season format. But MLS being MLS, they couldn’t get their crap together in time and couldn’t make it work until 2027.
Never Forget, his first appearance featured a strage name plate — it’s been a good run brother!
Maybe this means the team will have a new signing to announce soon? Maybe a rumor will come through.
The last few rumors have been promising. We have freed up the funds to make very enticing offers. I too hope to see more of these rumors come to fruition.
It always seems like a more savvy to move a player while they still have market value. I was shocked that more players from last season’s roster were just let go for free. Hopefully this will be spent wisely.
Does this mean that the 15 year old gets a senior roster slot even though he is playing for SKC 2? 🙂 Kidding…naturally, it just means that everyone else is on the senior roster except him. So, does that mean they would have to give all the supplemental roster spot players a raise to senior roster minimum?
They’ll just get charged a minimum budget charge for all the senior spots that aren’t filled. I’m not sure if it’s actual dollars that go somewhere or what though…
They are not worried about the roster compliance date at all. They can move guys or pay charges and then fill it in later. I know I asked about it the other day and it seems it was just not a concern.
This is fine. The team needed a thorough housecleaning, most of us have been saying so, and it’s not unusual to trade a player for something instead of letting them walk for nothing. He’s been a ghost of his peak self for several years now, whether through his own decline, or a lack of quality support, or coaching that didn’t make the most of his talents, or some combination. I wish him well. If we could have kept one of him or Thommy, I’d have kept the latter.
I cannot help but think he is going to destroy us whenever we play Toronto.
In fairness, everyone’s going to destroy us, so don’t feel so bad.
Yeah I think this is going to be a rough growing pains season
This feels shocking to me, but it’s kind of what I’ve been wanting. I wrote an article last year about this very move because we have a bad track record of keeping players past their expiration date. It’s what I wanted, but I feel sad all the same because of how synonymous he is with our club.
The timing for this just feels all wrong though. We’re two days away with barely enough players and lost one of our better ones. I wasn’t feeling too bad about the forward line, but now it’s pretty grim. And who wears the armband now? My money is on Manu or Joveljic at this point because who else is senior enough to wear it?
First, I just want to say how reasonable all these comments are. Our Facebook page is a cesspool of Salloi hate. Maybe it’s just because it’s Facebook (Reddit is basically the same).
The guy didn’t always live up to his contracts, but no reason to be terrible to him. He spent a decade with the team. He had some amazing highs and unfortunate lows.
The timing of this surprised me too. It’s the type of savvy business we’ve been asking for from this team for years (sell before they walk for free), but when you have no players on your roster, it felt abrupt. I think we all knew it was a rebuilding year. If they get $1m on a guy who was likely to leave after the season, that’s pretty smart.
It might not feel smart if they get rocked in San Jose though. Long-term vision.
It will still be smart, even if it stings a bit. I am def not ruling out a result though.
on the one hand im disappointed because I really like Daniel the person and enjoyed the bulk of his tenure on the pitch.
on the other hand, I’ve been begging for the club to operate like a proper club for years. That means selling guys before they walk for free. Getting SOMETHING for him is huge. Up to a million in GAM is great.
Daniel is SKC through and through. Can’t wait to cheer him when he returns. He’ll deserve it.