Sporting KC
REPORT: Joveljic Set to Move to Seattle
Less than a week after Sporting KC parted ways with Designated Player, Manu Garcia, the club reportedly will move on from another DP, Dejan Joveljic. Reports tonight from Fabrizio Romano along with Niko Moreno in Seattle and Tom Bogert report that Sporting is set to send Joveljic to the Seattle Sounders. The reported fee is $6 million and would be a cashfer transfer of Joveljic.
The fee would be a $2 million increase from the $4 million price Kansas City paid to acquire Joveljic from the LA Galaxy in February of 2025. In the year and a half Joveljic has been with Sporting he’s scored 26 goals and added five assists while playing in 52 of Sporting’s 54 games in that stretch.
It’s a shocker of a move that Kansas City is choosing to part ways with their leading scorer at this point, even in a lost season. It’s a move that is hard to understand with only the public knowledge of the team’s work to improve the roster as the club will now have just a single DP, the yet to arrive Andre Luiz. There’s been plenty of talk about Sporting’s owner, Peter Mallouk and his willingness to spend money to improve the team, and with this move it’d open up a second DP slot that Sporting could go out and fill.
With a couple weeks left in the transfer window for MLS teams, David Lee has time to add another forward to the roster. He has the roster spots along with the allocation money to throw around within the league if need be as well. At the same time he now has a pressing need to fill a position that for all intents and purposes wasn’t an issue for the club before this move. Currently the only center forward on Sporting’s roster now will be Taylor Calheira whose been Raphael Wicky’s preferred partner to Joveljic in the 4-4-2 that Kansas City has utilized most recently.
Kansas City will reportedly convert the maximum amount from the transfer to GAM ($3 million). That would give Kansas City an even larger amount of GAM to work with to acquire players.
The question will continue to be how the team will use it.
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This makes zero sense especially if they are just going to spend 4x what they were on Dejan for an MLS quality player.
I’m trying to see the rationale behind this.
And struggling…
Is this a worthwhile move to sell a DP striker (who wasn’t getting the service he needed) to free up the space to rebuild the midfield? Perhaps they have another already in mind?
Also, could Dejan have asked for this? From his standpoint, I think I could understand the desire to leave. SEA isn’t having a great season, but they are within striking distance of a playoff spot.
Another thought, is this like the Fire selling Cuypers to make room for Lewandoski? On paper you’d love to have both, but perhaps there’s a sense they wouldn’t both fit in the desired system?
The optics certainly aren’t good, but I’m open to making a final judgement on a longer time scale. And I agree it’s possible this is doing right by a player. Like St Louis sending Hartel back to Germany.
Still feels like a gut punch to send him to Seattle and not, say, some Eastern Conference team.
Perhaps there is someone already in the wings. Could it be the rumored DP from NYCFC or someone else?
I agree it’s tough to see him go to an elite n conference club.