Sporting KC’s End of the 2024 Season Contract Situations

The 2024 Major League Soccer playoffs start tonight, but Sporting Kansas City will not be involved. They’ve missed the playoffs two of the last three seasons and three of the last six. While the deadline to make roster decisions is still over a month away, it’s good to know who exactly are out of contract and who are still set to be here next year.

And you never know, teams can announce moves right away. St. Louis City already announced their roster moves. So, while Sporting KC can wait until November 27th, they could announce moves at any point. It seems pretty clear Peter Vermes is going to take at least a couple of weeks though.

Fully Out of Contract

Johnny Russell, Tim Melia, Remi Walter, Andreu Fontas

Just four players are fully out of contract of the 16 the team could move on from. Everyone except Walter will be eligible for free agency from these four guys, when that process starts in December. If Sporting KC want to sign them, they’ll have the chance to make those offers before other teams inside MLS. Outside MLS, players could have already signed pre-contract as early as this past summer and are actively available to start negotiating with new teams outside of the league.

2025 Contract Options Only

William Agada, Erik Thommy, Memo Rodriguez, Robert Castellanos, Logan Ndenbe, Robert Voloder, Ozzie Cisneros

Sporting KC can pick up any of the above players and lock them down for the final year of their current deal. Ndenbe and Voloder occupy two of the team’s U-22 Initiate spots. They could have one or two more signings in that area, if they keep both, depending on what roster construct they go with.

2025 Options and Beyond

Zorhan Bassong, Stephen Afrifa, Danny Flores, Chris Rindov, Ryan Schewe

All the above players have options for 2025, 2026 and in the case of Schewe, 2027.

Everyone Else

The team has only one true Designated Player, Alan Pulido. The other two, Daniel Salloi and Nemanja Radoja, are DPs in name only. Both of them can be bought down off their DP deals, but all three of them are guaranteed at least through 2025 (Radoja) with the others through 2026. Beyond the top three paid players on the team, the seventh highest (Shelton) and ninth highest (Leibold) are on guaranteed deals through 2025.

Technically, the team can buy out one player per season, but they didn’t use their buyout in 2024. It’s a mechanism that has rarely been used by KC. Beyond that, the team can look to transfer or trade players, but the likelihood is most of these players are back next season.

End of 2024 Season Sporting KC Contract Situations

Here is the full list of how everything stands, before the decisions have been made.