Podcasts
Sporting KC’s biggest questions ahead of 2024 MLS season
It’s essentially the same team as last year. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Last year turned out to be one of the most memorable seasons in club history. The offseason was a rollercoaster of emotions as well. But Sporting KC kick off their 2024 MLS season on Saturday at the Houston Dynamo and we have a full season preview show with everything you need to know ahead of Matchday 1.
Including… all the biggest questions you should be asking.
While teams around the league are bringing in young, South American forwards to be excited about, Sporting KC went without adding a player to the starting lineup. What they are left with is a team likely to see massive turnover after this year.
18 players are in the final year of their contract. Some have an option to extend, but that is a big number.
They didn’t bring in a replacement for Gadi Kinda. They have no depth and an injury anywhere on the field would be a disaster.
It’s almost the same team as last year, they’re just a year older. But therein lies the contradiction.
It’s almost the same team.
The same team that was the best in the West most of the season. The same team that gave us a legendary run and some of the most fun we’ve ever had beating STL in the playoffs.
It’s a difficult bunch to figure out right now. MLS pundits have predicted Sporting KC to finish anywhere from first in the Western Conference, all the way to 9th.
So, is it a good thing or a bad thing Sporting KC have the same team as last year? Only time will tell.
The Shades of Blue 2024 Season Preview takes you line-by-line through the roster, discussing the biggest questions along the way.
Keepers: Is this the year of the Big Bear?
Defenders: Jake Davis vs Kayden Pierre?
Midfield: Can Erik Thommy lead the midfield to the top of the West?
Forwards: Who is the first winger off the bench for Johnny Russell?
Plus we discuss the pressure on Peter Vermes after two tough seasons and the Gavin Wilkinson saga.
Find the KC Soccer Journal wherever you get your podcasts. Please subscribe, rate, & review! You can yell at Cody @ThatCodyTho, Thad @TheBackpost, and Robert @SpKCLife.
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I can’t remember if it was this podcast or the other (two in one week?!?!) but on the referees, it should be noted the “100%” raises are a little misleading. Some officials makes as little as $17k a year. So double that is still super low. That’s for assistant VARs I believe. The average AR pay is $34k I believe, so even doubling that isn’t outlandish.
Being a ref, as much as I crap on them when they mess up, is a hard and thankless job. You have to be fit enough to run up and down the field (center refs and ARs at least) with professional athletes. You have to be 100% on all the time (even players turn off, obviously).
I don’t think their demands are all that unreasonable.
A little context: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240218577863/en/‘This-is-a-Foul’-Refs’-Union-Condemns-Lockout-as-PRO-Bars-Major-League-Soccer-Refs-from-Working-Matches
Oh, I should have said, enjoyed both pods! Good work gentlemen!
It’s not a full time job though. $34k a year to work one or two days a week for 8 months isn’t insane.
The 8 months thing is a good point, but I do know referees have to do more than just the games. There are meetings and trainings with PRO, travel, time away from your family, keeping up your fitness (outside of the VAR and AVAR of course).
I’m not 100% certain what other requirements exist but it feels like a joke for MLS to say they are paying top tier salaries when the data shows otherwise.
On the topic of the roster we have is the roster we’re getting: LA (Galaxy) have signed Joseph Paintsil, who we were supposedly linked to.
His stats as a winger are pretty top tier, and given that Russell is on his last legs and the wings are somewhere we desperately need some life, it sucks seeing someone like him go someplace else (if we ever really had a chance to get him here that is)
I just don’t see how we can be so restricted monetarily and personnel wise, when all these other teams have been making move this off-season and are able to make things work. Where are all our resources tied up? Because outside of Pulido, overpaying for Radoja (I have yet to see him play to the level of his salary), and the insanely overpaid Shelton, how do we not have a ton of flexibility when we take the rest of the roster into context?
I hadn’t seen SKC linked to Paintsil. I heard him tied to the Galaxy the whole way from Tom Bogert.
As far as where the flexibility lies, SKC still has a true open DP spot they can spend unlimited money on and a good chunk of change for that final roster spot. We aren’t talking a minimum salary addition. If you can sign one amazing player and another solid contributor, that could be quite large.
Shelton is wildly overpaid, no doubt. He almost takes up a max budget charge. That’s wild. I’m typing this with my fingers crossed that he had a front-loaded contract and he’s gonna make the minimum this year, but I know I’m delusional.
Radoja is good if he can just be healthy. If you look at the second data release for salaries his pay dropped significantly. I think there was some oddities in the first release which Vermes always tells us the MLSPA do weird things with their numbers. But d-mid is possibly the single most important player in the way SKC play a 4-3-3. The real key is he needs to play more, and he missed too much time in 2023. Radoja is many times better than Walter at the d-mid spot. It’s hard to see sometimes because he just does so many little things well. But the results bear it out.
I believe it was a very loose link, but I may even be remembering that wrong
That’s true about the salaries, how the numbers are laid out, etc. It’s overcomplicated and seems unclear 90% of the time.
Makes sense about Radoja. I still think he hasn’t been a standout, but I’ll leave my final judgment till after we’re about midway through the season in which he had an off-season that he wasn’t injured for 50% of.
Overall I’m just frustrated with us hearing how what we have is what we have, and the feeling of us not really having the flexibility to do much outside of a DP signing. It feels like we should have the DP option + a lot of availability for moves all around the field as well. Maybe I’m feeling like that since I was expecting a large roster turnover both in 2023 and 2024 offseasons – therefore meaning there should be a lot of open opportunities – but instead we just got a bunch of keeping what we had.
Overall I’m excited for the season to start, but still tainted by the Wilkerson fiasco combined with a lack of any offseason changes, so I’m not expecting a whole lot this season. I’ll be happy to be wrong in my assumption though….
On the more flexibility, I know everyone can’t consume all the content about SKC but when we really started to look into the numbers, no one on large salaries was set to leave, outside of Kinda (who I hoped would stay). So, they have that DP spot and if the math is to be believed, a good chunk of salary and allocation money for the other spot.
But if you look back at the players that did leave, after Kinda it’s Zusi that’s the next highest paid. Then a bunch of guys not too terribly far off the minimum. And even Zusi was only at $325k, which in today’s MLS doesn’t get you a ton.
That said, after this season, not that they should, but they can move on from 18 (!!!) players. A lot of those guys we’ll surely want back or trigger their options on. The only have five guys fully out of contract (Johnny Russell, Tim Melia, Andreu Fontas, Remi Walter, Jake Davis). I imagine people would be split, but that’s a bunch of money they can free up and only Davis is super young and Remi is in his prime. Everyone else is old and it’ll likely depend where they spent these final two spots and how these guys age this year.
This roster build wasn’t sexy, but you need to peak in MLS heading into the playoffs and summer moves (think Agada and Thommy in 2022) may go a long way towards that. It’s boring right now, but it could really work out.