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Four Major Takeaways from the Mike Burns Sporting Director Announcement

We learned a lot about how things are going to work for Mike Burns in his new role as Sporting KC’s Sporting Director.

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10 months ago

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Credit: Sporting Kansas City

On Tuesday, Sporting Kansas City held its first press conference since announcing the hiring of Mike Burns as the clubs first new Sporting Director in 18 years. Peter Vermes relinquished one of his titles, as my For the Glory KC co-host has been asking him to do for a while.

Altogether, Vermes and Burns spent over 34 minutes talking to the media about a variety of topics. If you are even mildly close to being a ‘hardcore’ fan, both interviews are worth a listen in their entirety. If you don’t have that kind of time, let the KC Soccer Journal give you the tip of the iceberg highlights.

The Largest Budget in Club History

Let’s start with the headliner. According to Vermes, “the owners have committed, over the next four years, to giving us the largest budget we’ve ever had in our history.”

Because everything around the team is fairly negative right now, some are saying cynical things like the team can spend a single penny more and technically be the largest. And while technically that’s true, you don’t have to look too far into the past to see an offseason with a huge outlay.

After missing the playoffs in 2019, Sporting KC spent a record transfer fee to sign striker Alan Pulido. His fee was rumored between $6 and $10 million. That same offseason the team spent another $4 million to bring in Gadi Kinda. On the low end, that would mean a $10 million injection of cash into the team.

Hopefully it’s more than $10 million. The money portion of MLS can be a little opaque, though. If you only look at salary spend, Sporting KC were 15th in 2023 and slipped slightly to 18th in 2024. In a 29-team league, that doesn’t feel too bad.

That is, until you realize, Sporting KC are the only team in the league not to spend a transfer fee this year. In fact, they haven’t paid a fee for a player since Dany Rosero arrived early in the 2023 season. The last time they signed a Designated Player was the aforementioned Pulido/Kinda signings in the 2019-20 offseason.

Which lines up with his quote that they are basically in the basement of MLS spending.

“We’re in the bottom, bottom, bottom third [in spending],” said Vermes. “We need to be somewhere in the top middle third to the bottom of the top third. That’s where we need to be, and I think we have the ability to get there.”

While this talk of “thirds” is a little opaque, that would seem to indicate somewhere in the 8-12 range in spending in a 29-team league (30 teams next year with San Diego). It’s a heck of a lot better than at or near the bottom.

The Budget Is for Staffing Too

Sporting KC scored very low on American Soccer Analysis’ annual analytics survey. I’m not sure if Vermes or Burns are reading ASA, but the two long-time MLS veteran executives seem to be aware that what Sporting KC are doing isn’t enough.

While Vermes said, “we’ve got to improve our analytics department,” and Burns indicated they’d look to add staff there, both seemed a little apprehensive. The way they spoke of analytics is with the same generic terms I use, and I don’t know anything about all the data that’s available out there.

Burns saying he’s “not there yet” and that it is not “the ultimate decision maker” screams of a skepticism of analytics. And that makes sense considering both guys have been in or around MLS on a relatively consistent basis since their playing days. They both have a little bit of an old school vibe to them.

The way they spoke of adding a singular scout or singular analytics person feels too small. It feels like Sporting KC are behind in these areas and it’ll take a greater investment to catch up.

I’m willing to give Burns the benefit of the doubt since he’s still learning how Sporting KC function. He literally has worked for the team for three days. It’ll take time. Hopefully they press the accelerator to get ready for that big offseason rebuild.

Roster Moves are Coming but Maybe Slower than You’d Like

Back when Sporting KC missed out on four transfer targets during the winter window, I personally preached patience. There is no need to rush into signing a Designated Player, getting it all wrong, and being stuck on that contract for three to four years. Who knew Kinda leaving would have such an outsized impact on the club?

Well, you might need to exhibit even more patience. According to new Sporting Director Burns, “[Sporting KC] don’t have a ton of flexibility right now for the summer window. We are going to try to add a player, but we won’t be able to make wholesale changes this summer.”

He went on to add, “right now, we don’t have a ton of flexibility from a roster and budget standpoint.”

Part of this is no doubt true. There are 28 players under contract for the 2024 season and MLS rosters allow only 30 players. Ozzie Cisneros is out on loan to Carolina Core (MLS Next Pro) and Felipe Hernandez is on administrative leave, so that may technically clear two more spots.

The budget part is tougher to know. The team touted the flexibility they would maintain by temporarily naming Daniel Salloi and Nemanja Radoja as Designated Players that they could buy down later. It seems between that, the money not spent on Gadi Kinda and the new rules coming this summer that should give another $1 million in General Allocation Money, more could be done. But with just two weeks until the transfer window opens, and this season mostly lost, there is probably no need to rush into a rash decision.

That doesn’t mean things won’t be overturned in the offseason. There is a lot of flexibility between the salaries coming off the books and the pure number of players the team can move on from. Burns did stress that doesn’t mean “everyone’s gone,” but the winter window should be more active.

One other nugget that Vermes dropped in the press conference seemed to allude to the strategy that the team may go with two Designated Players, four U-22 players and the extra $2 million in GAM (just $1 million this season). That always felt like where SKC would land, but it’s good to hear him hint towards it more fully.

New MLS Roster Rules and How Sporting KC are Impacted

Who Reports to Who?

One question on everyone’s mind when the news broke that Burns would be the new Sporting Director was if Peter Vermes would be under Burns, over Burns or equals. The media spoke with Vermes first, and he didn’t really answer the question.

Daniel Sperry (KC Star): “What does the structure look like? Do you report to Mike Burns or do you report to ownership?

Vermes: “I’m not trying to be funny when I say this. I’ve been here for 18 years, and I’ve been in charge of the technical side. It’s not as if someone is now coming in and gonna tell me the ins and outs of this club. It’s impossible… It’s not about that it’s about us all collaborating and working together.”

With Burns, his answer was much clearer, besides his weird use of direct report (personally, my direct reports at work are under me, not over as Burns says).

Burns: “My direct report is [to] Peter. And speaking frankly, that’s the way, in my opinion, it should be.”

Both full quotes are below for added context.

This is the issue probably most griped about on the internet since the press conference. And while I understand the sentiment, it was always going to be this way. For the eight days Gavin Wilkinson worked for Sporting KC, he was under Peter. And it’s likely that it was a limiting factor in the candidate pool and possibly why it took another six months to replace that rash hire.

Typically, the Sporting Director hires and fires the coach. Vermes fired his predecessor and put himself in the manager job. If Peter is going to get fired, it’ll be coming from ownership. Right now, they’ve said they won’t be doing that.

My sincerest hope is that Vermes will let Burns and his future staff do their job. Then, they’ll need to collaborate, as they both mentioned. It seemingly says that Vermes will have final say, but hopefully he trusts the people around him since there aren’t enough hours in the day for one man to do both of these jobs.

What were your take aways from the press conference? Did you watch the whole thing? Tell us in the comments if you did.
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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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