Where are the New Sporting KC Designated Players

The transfer window came and went in Major League Soccer last Wednesday. While not all the deals were announced by midnight, the deluge of signings at the end of the window never came for Sporting Kansas City. Instead, the club announced a couple loans in (forwards Seymour Read and Ruben Ramos Jr.) and one out (GK Ryan Schewe).

Most Sporting KC fans were expecting something big, particularly after the sudden departures of Designated Players Dejan Joveljic and Manu Garcia over just a few days. Another move had to be coming, right? Wrong. That left SKC President of Soccer Operations and General Manager, David Lee, with a lot to address this past Thursday.

Where are the DPs?

One name that kept popping up was Yann Gboho from Toulouse. The window closed without news of him moving, even leaving Toulouse fans thinking they had failed to sell him, and he’d walk for free after the season. Instead, four days later, it emerged he had signed with Coventry City in the Premier League. It’s not an illogical choice for a 25-year-old heading into his prime to go to the top league in the world over MLS. But that doesn’t mean the team wasn’t trying.

“We were chasing DPs,” said David Lee. But he added, “we wanted to ensure that any decision we make now… they have to fit into the long-term plan.”

That reads like the players they wanted the most, didn’t work out. And Lee basically said as much.

“There’s a whole number of players that we were really interested in that decided to move elsewhere in Europe and maybe didn’t see coming to Kansas City as the right opportunity in this moment in their career,” continued Lee. “Certainly, when you are chasing and speaking to players with the type of transfer fees at DP level that we have been over the past couple of months, those are players that are very sought after and very in demand. They have multiple suitors.”

“Our job is to convince them of Kansas City. And I think we were able to do that with some of them. But fundamentally, I still think the reason why we did not eventually choose to finalize and close one of the other DP deals was primarily because it needed to fit the long-term plan and some based on position, based on what we might want to do in the future. We didn’t want to make a short-term decision given where we are right now and how much we need to improve moving forward.”

“It was trying to get that balance right. And in the end, Andre Luiz and Owen both fit perfectly into that. But we didn’t feel like there was another player that really would have achieved that as our overall ambition.”

If Not Now, then When?

One line no one will be happy to hear is that David Lee committed to filling the open two Designated Player spots, but he couldn’t commit to that happening this winter.

There was a lot of talk during Thursday’s press conference from Lee about maintaining flexibility. Not making the wrong decisions now. But at what point does that flexibility turn into actual signings? When does the can stop getting kicked down the road?

“If you compare sort of January 1 of this year to where we will be on January 1 of 2027, we will have two DP slots open,” began Lee. “We will have a U22 slot open, and we will have more available funds within the MLS mechanisms than we had in January of this year.”

He continued, “we’ve got more money to spend and less holes to fill and more discretionary resources available to spend. I think we end the window with an improved team overall than we had when we entered the window.”

That last line is definitely something that is up for debate. Is the team better than it was when the transfer window started? Most comparisons will probably start and end with Dejan Joveljic. They had him and now they don’t, and they didn’t really replace him. But they did add a promising talent in Andre Luiz and a U22 Initiative signing in Owen Wolff. Beyond the discretionary spending spots, they added two defensive starters in Moises Mosquera and Emir Karic.

On paper, the defense is better. It’s yet to fully show on the field though. The offense showed signs of life without a fully fit Luiz or Wolff playing a single minute. This is something that’ll surely become clearer in the coming weeks.

About Those Past Transfer Promises

One think Sporting KC fans know is what it’s like to always wait for the future. In the summer of 2024, there was a recommitment from the prior ownership group to rebuild the team in three windows. They hired Sporting Director Mike Burns, and he was getting right to work. Except, that first window didn’t count. It’s the next three windows. That winter, Burns signed Dejan Joveljic and Manu Garcia and then eight games later Peter Vermes was fired.

Well now that summer window can’t count, because there is an interim coach. David Lee joined towards the end of the 2025 season and looked to completely overhaul the roster. But he found it difficult with no front office staff in place. The preseason started with the shell of a roster and pieces trickled in as the season continued on. But Lee had a plan. Until that was partially ripped up when Peter Mallouk took over as majority owner. While that happened around that transfer window, Lee has been transparent they re-drew plans for transfers around May of 2026.

Lee and his staff were scouting players based on an old budget, and suddenly Mallouk had given them anything they wanted to fix the team. But all that groundwork was on guys that fit the old budget. Here we are two years into a rebuild, and there is a whole new plan and a whole new budget. I wouldn’t call it a complete reset, but it’s definitely a recalibration at the top of their spending around DPs and U22s.

“I can’t say what happened before I arrived,” said Lee. “All I know is the past of this transfer window in particular we’ve been given absolutely every support.”

There is a new plan. Come January, that plan will have been in place and the new staff will all be here. The excuses have to stop, and the can cannot be kicked down the road again.

A Message to the Fans

“I can understand our fans frustration, which primarily I think is where we are in the table and the performances and the results that we’ve seen,” started Lee. “I think if we have the window that we have now where we sign, as far as I understand, the most players in Sporting Kansas City history in a summer window, we spent the most amount of money that Sporting Kansas City have ever spent. And we are in fourth place. Probably the feeling is just very different.”

“I think what I would say to fans is the plan is really clear, and I understand that we need to deliver.”

He continued talking about they don’t want to put the team in a situation it was in before. Where the roster is full, and they have no ability to improve the team “because the money had been committed and the money had been spent. That’s not where we are.”

“We’ve improved the team, in my opinion, through this summer window, and we’ve retained flexibility to ensure we can go again. And I would say to fans we are absolutely committed to making sure that this team gets back to where it needs to be and winning games consistently. We have the resources to do it. We have discretionary slots available to do it. We have non-discretionary slots available to do it. And our intent is to make sure that we build a structure where those decisions are consistently correct and sustainably correct, because that will lead to success moving forward for Sporting Kansas City.”

“We are not in a position where I understand if we make a DP signing [last Wednesday], probably the dopamine is extremely, extremely high at that moment in time. But it won’t be in 12 months if that player wasn’t the right one and we’re unable to now use a DP slot on a different player. We are for sure, in my opinion, going in the right direction. I understand results would potentially question that right now, but the plan is clear of where we’re going and how we’re going to get it back. And we have to deliver. We have to deliver results on the pitch, and we have to deliver to ensure we continue to build the roster.”