Final 2025 Sporting KC Salaries Released

It’s that time of the year again. The second of two Major League Soccer (MLS) salary data sets was released by the MLS Players Association (MLSPA). Before looking at the new Fall of 2025 data (which is at the bottom if you want to jump straight to that), it’s useful to look at prior data points for Sporting Kansas City. Here are the last three seasons:

• Spring 2025
• Fall 2024
• Spring 2024
• Fall 2023
• Spring 2023

Some Quick Caveats

A lot is made of the salary data, but it only tells part of the story. These numbers don’t include transfer fees. Sporting Kansas City paid $4 million for Dejan Joveljic as the first cash transfer in MLS history. There is also a rumored combined $5 million fee for Manu Garcia and Shapi Suleymanov, but how much is allocated to each player is unknown.

Second, there are two salary numbers: base salary and guaranteed compensation. The guaranteed number feels more accurate because it includes any pro-rated signing or performance bonuses spread out over the life of the contract. We’ll use that number going forward.

Without getting too deep into the weeds, there are a couple roster designations that add some context to these salaries. The team has two Designated Players (DPs) and had two U-22 Initiative Players (at the time of this data). In 2025, the DPs only count for $743,750 against the cap (no matter their salary or transfer fee) and the U-22 players only count for $200,000 (no matter their salary or transfer fee). Some U-22 players count for $150,000, but Sporting KC don’t have any of those. In 2026, that number for DPs will climb, as it’s always 12.5 percent of the salary budget, which also raises annually.

New Signing

Signing singular, because there is only one. The intro to this article is longer than the changes because there are only two. Alan Montes is added to this data and Dany Rosero is removed. Ironically, the vast majority of this information is more for archival purposes than anything else, because Sporting KC are down to just 13 players on the roster.

As for Montes’ wage, the MLSPA shows him at $422,500 but that’s a little confusing. The team listed him as a Targeted Allocation Money player, which means he should make at least $743,750. That likely means he made $422,500 and it wasn’t a pro-rated salary over the whole season. Maybe he got all that money, but it really would have been double if he was here all year? It’s hard to know. His larger cap charge for 2026 may have played a part in Sporting KC declining his loan purchase option.

But again, none of that really matters because he’s gone. As are a majority of the guys listed below.

Perhaps more importantly, you can see how much Sporting KC saved. There were probably some raises built into the declined options, but $8,523,535 fell off the books when David Lee announced his cuts. There is room to make this roster significantly better.

The Rest of the League

Usually, the KC Soccer Journal does a deep dive into the rest of the wages in MLS and how Sporting KC compare. However, the season is over, and it hasn’t changed that much since we did that in the spring. I would encourage you to simply check that out.

Or if you need the most up to date analysis, Tom Bogert over at The Athletic has a nice breakdown. A couple noteworthy bits:

• Toronto FC went from 2nd in spending to 27th with their DP buyouts
• Son Heung-min is the league’s 2nd highest paid player: $11.15 million
• Miami and Vancouver are skirting rules to add Rodrigo De Paul & Thomas Müller

Sporting KC’s Salaries

Here are the full salaries, along with the position as assigned by the MLSPA.