Rumor: Sporting KC Linked to 24-Year-Old Swedish Striker Abraham

The transfer window in Major League Soccer closes on September 2nd. Reports have Sporting Kansas City trying to add two very expensive Designated Players in the next few days after the departures of Dejan Joveljic and Manu Garcia.

The latest rumor doesn’t appear to be a DP, but instead the kind of move made possible with the $3 million in General Allocation Money gained from the Joveljic sale.

Swedish outlet Expressen’s Aneel Avdic is reporting that Sporting KC “has made a bid of 30 million kronor for Paulos Abraham.” On today’s conversion rate, that’s about $3.1 million USD.

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Abraham plays for Hammarby IF, who currently are second in the race for the top spot in Sweden with 12 games to go in the season. Paulos has been an important piece for his team, playing striker and adding 11 goals and three assists in the first 18 games of the season. He’s appeared in every game.

Paulos Abraham is a left-footed center forward who stands 5’11. He’s under contract through the end of 2028, so a transfer fee would be required to pry him free.

He just arrived at Hammarby in 2025 from FC Groningen in the Netherlands. Before that, spent a year on loan at IFK Göteborg in Sweden (a team that was once one spot above SKC in some world rankings and had a fake rivalry emerge). He’s also played for several other Swedish clubs, including AIK and he came up in the IF Bromma youth system.

The goal scoring isn’t new either. In his pro career, he’s scored 42 goals (not including youth competitions) and added 21 assists, according to Transfermarkt.

Highlights

In this two-year-old highlight video, he’s mostly shown playing left wing. He seems comfortable with the ball at his feet and in traffic. Despite being listed as left footed, he actually plays quite a bit with his right but can hit a shot with either foot. He combines well with his teammates. The highlights don’t show his pace really, so it’s not clear if he fits the mold of the lightening quick guys Sporting KC have been signing recently.

These 2025 highlights have a lot to like. It’s more of the same, plus, he has nice crossing inside the box. There is more of his two-footed nature. And he consistently finds himself in dangerous positions to score goals.

Roster Fit

Obviously Sporting KC has a need a striker with the departure of Joveljic. There is a philosophy out there that says spend your Designated Player money on wingers and attacking mids and find a player like this to score goals at a discount.

Right now, 24-year-old Taylor Calheira is suddenly the starting striker on SKC. This rumored move doesn’t preclude SKC from ultimately spending another DP spot on striker along with the rumored attacking midfielder DP they are trying to add. If they can get a #10 over the line and something like this, and the third and final DP doesn’t come until the winter, that’s probably not the end of the world.

It is silly season, so take everything with a grain of salt. There are certainly many more offers that President of Soccer Operations David Lee has made that we’ll never hear about, but Paulos looks intriguing.

Something to keep an eye on will be this morning’s Svenska Cupen (Swedish Cup) fixture to see if Abraham is in the lineup. It’s possible if they are holding him out, a deal could be made.

Shout out to Twitter user Bryce Erickson for the tip!