Sporting KC
Ben Sweat Released by Sporting Kansas City
After a red card suspension, Ben Sweat will never see the field for Sporting KC again.
On Tuesday morning the media was invited to Compass Mineral National Performance Center for the weekly availability to watch the team practice. The KC Soccer Journal’s own Thad Bell noticed that Ben Sweat, Tim Leibold and Nemanja Radoja weren’t in practice. Leibold and Radoja were injured, so that made sense. Sweat had been suspended with a red card from the prior game, but there was no other indication as to why he wouldn’t be on the field. When asked about it after practice, Sporting KC Manager and Sporting Director Peter Vermes said he’d have an update on the situation tomorrow.
Peter Vermes was asked about Ben Sweat's absence from training today.
He said he'll have an update tomorrow. #SportingKC #MLS
— KC Soccer Journal (@KCSoccerJournal) April 4, 2023
Then Twitter user Cutter Whitley noticed that Ben Sweat had unfollowed Sporting KC on Instagram and removed all mention of the club from his bio.
🚨Ben Sweat has unfollowed Sporting KC on Instagram and removed all mention of the club from his bio🚨#SportingKC
— Cutter Whitley (@imcutterbutter) April 4, 2023
At 5:20 PM, the team announced that left back Sweat had been waived.
How Did we Get Here?
The last time we saw Ben Sweat was in the 4-1 loss to the Seattle Sounders at Children’s Mercy Park on March 25th. In that game, Sweat picked up a red card and was suspended from the match against the Philadelphia Union this past weekend. Some of us wanted to blame that entire loss on Sweat (it was me, I did it). I would argue you can draw a straight line from Ben Sweat mistakes to all three losses Sporting KC have had this season.
The play in the opener where Sweat “saved” the ball from going out for a goal kick, that led to the Portland Timbers game winning goal. The pass from Sweat against FC Dallas that led to Jesus Ferreira’s game winning goal. And the Seattle game.
Cutting Sweat doesn’t fix everything, and the real reason he is gone may never be fully known, but he’s not with the team anymore.
Where Does this Leave the Left Back Spot?
With Sweat gone, there is only one healthy fullback on the SKC roster. Graham Zusi is the last man standing with injuries hampering the aforementioned Leibold, Logan Ndenbe and Kayden Pierre. Against Philly, Sporting started center back Robert Voloder out of position at LB. He acquainted himself well enough.
For SKC II, Cam Duke put in 90 minutes on Sunday at left back, possibly in preparation for this upcoming roster move. With Leibold not a participant in practice, he may be a bit further off right now. Voloder and Duke are options. Plus, we got the news (and video) that Ndenbe was back in team drills and Pierre is at least jogging at practice.
Logan Ndenbe's calves are back in full training.
Kayden Pierre running on the side.
Gadi Kinda is training, but taking regular breaks.#SportingKC pic.twitter.com/DHcUTPUnzC
— KC Soccer Journal (@KCSoccerJournal) April 4, 2023
Whatever the future holds for SKC’s backline, it’s not Ben Sweat. He was just added to the roster ahead of the 2022 season and made $200,000 in his first season with the team. He made 29 appearances with 26 starts in his short tenure with the club. His subtraction from the roster opens up space for the team to make a move, though it’s unclear if any salary relief comes with this move.
The Kansas City Soccer Journal will bring you more on the Sweat situation as it becomes available.
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Let the door hit you on the way out.
This is hardly surprising, and I think it’s for the best. The timing sucks, but then again if the back line wasn’t so strapped it may not have been as abundantly clear so quickly that this was not only a good move but a necessary one.
I’m nosy and want to know everything that was going on the last week and half running up to this decision.
I was saying before the Seattle game how it would be awesome if Sweat followed the same path as Mauri. I’m so glad he did
He deserved it more than Mauri, or Amor.
Even though the moves are hard to argue with, I’m not sure it’s a good thing how many players we (ahem, PV) run off. It used to be that former players were beating down the door to come back. More recently it feels like it’s going the other way.
He had potential to be a useful member for the team but he never could cut the mental mistakes out. It would have been nice to have a domestic veteran LB with so little cap hit which is the most frustrating thing about him.
He set the offside line behind the CB’s repeatedly which is one of my pet peeves. The second goal against Seattle was him dropping behind Fontas and Voloder who did a good job setting a line to get Morris offside. That doesn’t happen it’s a completely different game.
Not to mention a few minutes later he got a red. But I already did a whole pod trashing him on those points, so I guess I’ll move on.
I figured that didn’t need to be mentioned.
I wanted to root for Ben, I really did. He professed a thirst for “trophies” when he signed here, saying all the right things about us being a model club and respecting us so much from afar. He was working his way back from a devastating injury, which makes you want to pull for someone. He left his soul (almost literally) on the field against Sacramento in that USOC loss last year, and it wasn’t his fault that we couldn’t buy a goal against a USL team. So I was really happy for him when he seemed to form that left-side connection with Daniel and Agada last year and we went on that tear. And yet . . . his attitude always kinda rubbed me the wrong way. He seemed generally annoyed at life and as though he thought he was better than he really was (like Chad and Sheena said on For the Glory). I hate for anyone to lose their job, but he was terrible this year and needed to go. #headscratcherout
Unrelated, but sorta related post, when will PV see the light with Shelton?!!! I was literally yelling at the TV as Shelton (the sub!) jogged his way round the pitch while the team was desperately holding on for a point in Philly. I saw his (limited) qualities in previous seasons that allowed me to at least understand his place on the roster, though not the percentage of playing time he got relative to others. Now I can’t see why he’s here at all, let alone why he was given that offseason or why he continues to get run out there game after game when he clearly bounced hard off his ceiling years ago. Why Peter, why? At least with Shelton I have NO qualms about rooting for him as a person. But still, he’s here to play soccer, for crying out loud, not be their community relations director.
Thank the maker
This is where I need gifs. C-3P0 would be perfect here.
As great looking as the new site is, not gonna lie the 2 features that I miss are the gifs and the little thing on the main page that would say how many comments/new comments since last visit.
We miss those as well. We are working on the comments but I do not know when or if we will be able to do that.
I feel like kind of bad. Sheena and I just did our COL/SKC preview podcast and we kicked it off with the Sweat news. Hopefully in editing Sheena makes us sound nicer!
He’s (been) getting crapped on from every angle; in that sense I feel bad, too. (These guys are human, after all, and I’ll bet the past several days have been awful for him and his family. I want to believe every guy on the team is working hard and trying their best even if the results are suboptimal.) On one hand his performance this season was severely lacking. But on the other, it’s not he like he put himself in the starting lineup. Waiving him was the right move for him and the coaching staff; there was no other way forward.
I do not feel bad for any professional athlete being bad at their job. They are in the entertainment industry and they knew what they signed up for. No one deserves to be successful just because they chose a certain job.
I think what Kat’s saying is that (most) people don’t deserve to be universally and publicly shat upon. “Being successful” is not what’s being discussed here; no one’s saying he should have kept his job regardless of performance.
Perhaps. But sports is entertainment. And anyone going into it professionally knows they are going to be critiqued. If you don’t want to be dumped on, don’t repeatedly make mistakes so juvenile they deserve to be.
200k might not be superstar wages. But it’s more than 90% of the fans watching will see in 3 yrs. So, as long as the criticism is professional and not personal, my sympathy is limited. Because that’s the business they have chosen.
You guys. I never said he doesn’t deserve criticism and I am in 100% agreement he needed to go. But I can still feel basic compassion for a person; those things are not mutually exclusive. He played poorly, now he’s waived. At that point, I’m gonna let the mouse go and stop piling on unlike people all over the internets yesterday (ETA: a lot of the criticism across SM was not professional/constructive).
I’m embarrassed by how long it took me to realize what “across SM” meant. I’m so old!
You are not. But, yay, this is my first time seeing you over here!
Reading comprehension strikes again. /s
This feels like WAY too personal of a response to Kat’s comment.
It does feel that way; thanks for acknowledging that. But it has been interesting seeing the “+/-“ feature at work, though…
What is the difference between a buy out and waiving a player? And can we do it more than once? There’s another player I wouldn’t mind seeing leave the club due to poor performances…
I would assume the wording “waived” means he’s paid versus “mutually terminated” (like Jose Mauri). Rosell was waived (and the team can still use their buyout on him, a more expensive contract than Sweat).
So, unless he’s signed elsewhere (I did confirm there is a partial offset with the Galaxy signing Rosell), it seems likely they are on the hook for Sweat’s salary.
Again, I’m just going off the press release wording.
I think Chad’s got it right. Waived means he is still being paid and another team can take on his existing contract. If no one does and he doesn’t sign a new contract, either Sporting or MLS has to continue to pay him.
A buyout allows the team to release the player and also completely remove their contract from the salary/cap. The player gets the entirety of their contract paid to them by the club. Being cut this point in the season means his salary still affects the cap. Not sure what the club is required to pay him though. Probably all the guarantees left in his contact.
Good extra context here ASL.
I have to think this was the plan going back to the Leibold signing. And he probably heard the footsteps and knew this was coming which seems like a difficult work environment to play in. He might have stayed on the roster a few more weeks if not for the red card and a CB looking better than him at his natural position, but those two things happened and so the timeline is right now.
I theorized that Roger would heel turn this season to be the next Jose mauri, but I wasn’t expecting someone to actually go through with it.
I also made the point awhile back that sweat seemed to be the one who more or less voiced his displeasure at the Leibold signing, and I wondered if that could be affecting his play. Whether it did or didn’t, I’ll never know. But this season he looked generally uninterested and never got into a groove with the rest of the team. He was constantly out of position and was one of the guys who was hollering and being demonstrative on the field, and then he’d follow it up with terrible crosses and play. Maybe he knew it was only a matter of time until Leibold and Logan would be up to speed and he’d be done in one way or another. Idk, but it’s just odd that he ended the season ok and in one offseason tripped and fell off the cliff. He just never looked good in any facet this year.
I don’t want to be the “pile on Peter” guy, but aside from injuries being a concern these early season cuts are as well. I have a hard time believing there wasn’t an inkling that sweat was not in a good place in preseason, I get wanting depth and waiting. But if things aren’t going down a good path, I have to believe you Vite the bullet and move on. Dragging on these issues cause distractions both as fans and players, lowering morale in the process. It’s another reason I don’t understand the cristiano chase. Can anyone imagine how Peter could manage a guy who throws a hissy fit when you don’t pass him the ball every single possession after the mauri, sweat, amor, etc debacles
Peter definitely has some ‘blame’ in signing Leibold and causing this. But the tiny glimpse of Tim Leibold seemed to show he was a pretty good talent (if he can stay healthy).
I also think it’s on Sweat for not handling it well. Sometimes a young guy or new guy gets signed and it motivates the guy he’s trying to replace to perform better. See Seth Sinovic for all those seasons. PV kept having to play him because he was better than the guys trying to come in an replace him.
Ben Sweat is no Seth Sinovic. And now is his best hope joining a USL Championship side? I don’t see another MLS team wanting to touch him after this 2023 performance.
Im not even sure he wants to continue playing…..
I could see another MLS team going for him as a backup. Left backs aren’t the easiest position to come across because it’s the one position that you almost have to be left footed which already decreases the pool. So many coaches tried to fit me there because I was a lefty even though I was one of the worst one v one defenders on the team. If you don’t have international slots and need depth hed be a decent one to go after, we’re the exception with another two and a center back that can play there.
I think ordinarily that would be true, but I think that Ben is kind of the outlier. If he wasn’t exactly supportive of Leibold coming on and competing with him and Logan, I find it hard he would be excited to be someone’s depth signing. As far as him going to usl, I don’t see him really going there if he’s made comments in the past of his play being a high level, referring to Chad’s interview of him, and at this point in his career I doubt he would want to go somewhere lower to prove he can still play nor do I see most teams really wanting a 31 year old left back who was released during the season by his last mls team. That’s why I’m loudly wondering if this is an informal retirement move.
I meant to say, “I don’t see most mls teams really wanting a 31 year old usl leftback that was released during the season by his prior mls team” I got ahead of myself and I didn’t see an edit button
Some USL teams seem to make a point to be loaded with veteran players but you may be right that Sweat doesn’t want that. I doubt anyone in USL is going to pay him $200k, but my understanding is he’d make that from MLS/SKC even if he doesn’t play another minute this year (unless it was a mutual termination, but it didn’t say that in the presser).
We’ll see how bad he still wants to play.
I sometime roll my eyes at the “athlete-speak”. The answers to questions that are so canned. “I’m just blessed to have this opportunity”; “The coach decides who is in the starting 11 and my only job to make the most of my opportunities and play for the team”. Pulido seems to be an absolute master of this. Part of why I think he sounds detached from the team sometimes. So I thought Sweat’s answers had been kind of refreshing. But I’m starting to understand why athletes are so careful about their words. Canned answers leave you less vulnerable to linking your play with your words.
In all those years Seth had to fight, I never heard a quote that was anything but “athlete-speak”, at least not until he had retired a few years and could be a bit more open about being pissed.