Sporting KC
Does Splashing the Cash in MLS Work?
Sporting KC are linked with a big money move this summer. But how do big money moves in MLS work out?
Sporting Kansas City look set to make a splash this summer window bringing in a third Designated Player for the club. Three names have been mentioned, Mohamed Salah, Yann Gboho, and Andre Luiz. While Salah is out of contract, the other two are currently under contract with another club, meaning if KC were to acquire Gboho or Luiz, KC would be paying a transfer fee to their current club to acquire them. The reports currently have Kansas City spending somewhere between €18m and €22m to acquire either of the two. That fee would put their acquisition as the largest in Kansas City’s history by a considerable margin, and one of the largest fees paid in MLS history.
Paying a large transfer fee though doesn’t necessarily guarantee success on the field, so with the transfer fee in mind, let’s take a look at some of the largest transfer fees paid in MLS history and how those signings have worked out. For this list, we’re going to use Transfermarkt’s evaluation of transfers. Given how tight-lipped MLS tends to be with announcing the actual fee paid for players the real number may be off, but it’s a reference point.
1. Heung-min Son – Los Angeles FC – €22m
Son falls into a couple of categories with this fee that Los Angeles FC paid to Tottenham last summer to acquire the South Korean international. He’s still an extremely talented player, as Sporting themselves found out last Saturday when Sporting played LAFC. He has also brought an audience to the club from the South Korean community. He’s recorded 12 goals and 13 assists for LAFC in twenty-six games, adding another three goals and an assist in the playoffs, and two goals and seven assists in Concacaf Champions Cup. It’s still relatively early but overall, this seems a good price paid by LAFC.
2. Emmanuel Latte Lath – Atlanta United – €21.25m
From the good to the bad. Latte Lath arrived in Atlanta before the 2025 MLS season from EFL Championship side, Middlesbrough, with the hope that he’d help bring Atlanta United back to the success they’d had early in their club’s history. It’s been a struggle though. In forty-four league games over a year and a half he has scored just nine goals. He’s been held out of Atlanta’s last two league games with reports that he’ll be returning to Europe (likely at a loss for Atlanta).
3. Josh Sargent – Toronto FC- €18.65m
The player that Sporting KC at one time had a Homegrown Player territory claim on returned to MLS this season to Toronto FC. It’s a little too early to gauge this signing for Toronto, but early on it’s probably fair to say Sargent hasn’t lit the league on fire with three goals and one assist in ten games this season and Toronto outside the playoffs currently.
4. Kevin Denkey – FC Cincinnati – €15.3m
The 24-year-old forward for Cincinnati has had a successful start to his career in MLS scoring twenty-six goals in forty-five games, while playing a little over 3,600 minutes. The Togolese striker certainly seems to be a hit for Cincinnati, even with the high price.
5. Rodrigo De Paul – Inter Miami – €15m
The Argentine international was acquired on a DP contract for the 2026 season after being on loan in the second half of the 2025 season. He’s scored four goals this season and added seven assists as Miami sit just behind Nashville SC in the Eastern Conference and Supporters’ Shield standings. It’s a solid output for a player who predominately plays a little deeper in Miami’s star studded team.
It’s certainly a mixed bag of results for the top five players, of which Gboho or Luiz would land squarely in the middle of if SKC gets either of the deals done. Four of the five players are in markets that would be considered more high profile than Kansas City, with only Denkey and Cincinnati being near the same level as Kansas City. The top five are all from five different teams, which is a potential factor in pay. Though if you expand the number further, reviewing the above from Transfermarkt, Atlanta have four of the top ten highest fees paid for players, while Miami have two of the remaining six.
For a team like Kansas City putting up that much money into one player it feels like there’s less room for error in how the player contributes to the team. Obviously that also looks at the owner of the club and their net worth, so maybe Peter Mallouk is willing to eat more if the player doesn’t pan out.
All that to say, paying the reported fee for Luiz or Gboho doesn’t guarantee success on the field for an MLS team. At best it’s a mixed bag of results. Assuming one of the two will be on their way to KC. While it’s fun to see Kansas City up among the big spenders in the league, the results aren’t guaranteed and whoever KC acquires, if they end up completing the deal, will have large expectations placed on them.
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I remember watching Kaka lose his mind week in and week out with an ORL club who had no idea what to do with his kind of talent. So I think there is a tipping point in understanding what you have and who you can sign. Kaka may be the extreme end of that spectrum. They just signed Greizman…
Right now, it doesn’t feel like SKC is a $20mil player away from glory. I could easily be wrong here. But 6 $3mil players seems like a better way to spend money for n our current state. I don’t doubt that Gboho is a stellar footballer. But some of the big name formula is your butts in seats and sell shirts and create some hype. I don’t see that happening with Gboho or Luiz.
As much as I don’t like it, it makes sense for MIA to sign Casemiro. They need help and they are a play off contender.
Building a football team is like blending a good whiskey. Money may buy better ingredients, but expensive ingredients do not guarantee a good result. They must be selected for the right purpose, combined carefully and allowed to work together. The article focuses too heavily on what individual players cost and whether their personal statistics justified the fee. That misses the real question: whether the club buying them knows how to create the right blend.
World football is not basketball. One dominant player cannot simply take control of every possession and transform a team by himself. A footballer depends on the system, the manager and the players around him. A talented striker still needs service. A creative midfielder needs movement ahead of him. A goalkeeper needs an organized defense. The wrong player in the wrong system will struggle, but the wrong system can also make the right player look like a failure.
That is the real concern with Sporting Kansas City. Football has evolved, but Sporting has spent too long relying on reputations, valuations and ideas formed under different conditions. The current executives may understand the correct language. They talk about playing principles, development, recruitment and continuity. Some of them have succeeded in other organizations. But their actions and the results in Kansas City have not backed up those words.
Sporting remains at the bottom of the conference, where it has been for far too long, without showing a convincing route forward. The manager may have a vision, but he has not demonstrated that he can execute it. A capable manager must take different egos, playing styles, strengths and weaknesses and blend them into a focused team. He must improve the useful players already available rather than waiting for an ideal roster to arrive. Thus far, Sporting does not look more organized, more consistent or closer to becoming a modern football side.
John Pulskamp is one reason to question the current environment. He played every minute in 2025, performed admirably behind a poor team and was named Sporting’s Defensive Player of the Year. This season he went from being the established number one to appearing only sporadically. That does not prove he suddenly ceased to be a capable goalkeeper. It suggests that Sporting took one of the few ingredients that was working and failed to develop or even preserve it.
That is why comparing the transfer fees and statistics of several expensive MLS players tells us very little. Money does not equal talent, and talent does not automatically equal value. A gifted player placed into the wrong blend can fail, while a less celebrated player placed into the right one can thrive. Sporting does not simply need more money or more talent. It needs executives and a manager capable of identifying the right players, placing them in the right roles and blending them into something stronger than the individual parts.
There is also a longer-term danger. Expensive players will not remain indefinitely in an environment where they cannot thrive, protect their reputations or advance their careers. Other desirable players and managers will notice. No serious footballer or coach wants to risk becoming the next person blamed for the failure of a badly run operation. Once a club develops a reputation for making talent look worse, it must overpay simply to persuade people to come.
The article is right that spending €20 million does not guarantee success, but that conclusion is so obvious that it avoids the more important issue. Sporting Kansas City does not first need a more expensive ingredient. It needs people who know what they are trying to produce and how the pieces are supposed to work together. Right now, Sporting is not blending a strong whiskey. It is combining increasingly expensive ingredients and producing something that tastes like Listerine.
Your analysis ignores that we have a new DoF/GM or whatever you want to call it. So when you critique the club and how it evaluates talent, you’re using an incorrect lens to view the current front office structure.
moreover, spending money does not always guarantee success, but generally it does. Look at the teams that win in world football. They’re almost always the most expensive rosters because those are the best players. MLS is different because it’s a salary capppd league with more parity, but money often does mean higher quality. Soccernomics covered this years ago.
During the World Cup, the announcers in one of the either round of 32 or 16 games said that 90% of the time, the team with the higher quality roster wins. That was both a “no duh” and “wow” moment for me. It makes sense and yet I was still amazed that it was true.
When SKC didn’t aggressively pursue Christian Espinoza (or really anyone high quality) in free agency this past off season, I was worried that the roster would not be awesome. I thought Wicky would get more out of the roster than it looked capable of producing after the first few games, but nope…the roster was just as bad as I thought.
I think the pieces are there to have a decent team now though. Both CBs and the new LB are all pretty darn good. Berg I think would be fine (because the CBs would help cover for him). Even with Jake as RB, I think Jake gets forward and cuts inside to help the offense and the LB stays home. I’m not sure why we are not playing through Jake and Capita all the time. They both are looking for Deki…no one else is. I think the big problem is that Manu and Berg occupy the exact same space all the time. Manu insists on dropping deep and being a ball progresser vs the guy setting up the play in the box. I think this is why Wicky isn’t starting him. I think he was putting Manu up top with Deki in a 4-4-2 to keep him forward but even with that he was dropping deep (not as bad but still happened often enough to notice)
Sad to say, but Houston’s midfield dominated SKC with a 36 year old (albeit good player) and Artur who is decent but no world beater.
I don’t have any answers really…just lots of questions. I’d holding out hope that leadership will figure it out. The defense was a positive this past game. If Wicky can fix that, perhaps SKC can win a few games. My only hope is to not be last in the league and conference.
I agree that we have the pieces to be playing much better football than we have shown. Whatever the solution to translating that talent to results is beyond me. I just hope that Wicky can figure that out.
You are spot on about Manu. I think he is an extremely talented footballer, but he does not seem like he is what this particular club needs at this point in our progression. I’m not knocking his talent, more of his fitment into whatever we are trying to do here. I think a new no10 should be on the shopping list.