Emergency Pod: Dejan Joveljic Being Sold?

For the Glory KC is back with the 192nd episode of the show!

Sporting Kansas City have had an incredibly busy week. The last six days has seen the departure of fan favorite and Designated Player, Manu Garcia. The arrival of the fourth most expensive player in MLS history in Andre Luiz. A rumored even more expensive transfer of Nico Fernandez Mercau.

But Saturday night may be the biggest news yet. Fabrizio Romano and Tom Bogert are reporting that Dejan Joveljic is moving within the conference to the Seattle Sounders! You’d think it’d be a massive transfer fee, but instead it’s only $6 million for one of the best goal scorers in Major League Soccer. Yes, it’s a 50 percent profit after only 18 months, but it’s a stunner.

We go through all the reasons this could be happening and try to make sense of the news. Did Dejan want out? Did he not like how the Manu saga went down this week? Sheena did live sleuthing on the podcast and noticed he’d been absent from their social media all week. When David Lee told us midweek that teams are calling about their players, it seems clear Dejan was always the answer, and he may have already been negotiating at that time.

Beyond that, is Dejan just not a system fit for Lee and Rapha Wicky? Or perhaps Lee just wants his guys. The typical starting lineup only has two players that were around more than 11 months ago in Jake Davis and Zorhan Bassong. Is the General Allocation Money (GAM) just too much to pass up?

We go through all the permutations. And we talk about what comes next. More Designated Players have to be arriving, right? We also went through all the big points from David Lee’s press conference and tried to figure out what DPs Lee could sign. I threw out Cucho Hernandez as a former player who did great in MLS and Sheena went a lot more out of left field with USA-loving Erling Haaland. It’s nonsense, but it least it was fun nonsense.

Speaking of DPs, we talk about new signing Andre Luiz, the rumored transfer for Nico Fernandez and all the other fallout of the week for Sporting KC. It’s weird to record a day before a game, but the news just became too much. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast, who knows when we’ll have to record again with the transfer window closing in 11 days on September 2nd.

We also talked about the game against St. Louis City SC, that SKC dominated but only got a draw out of. Taylor Calheira was one of the stars of the night and I guess is this team’s starting striker now? What a wild week!

The KC Current also earned a draw, but it felt more disappointing considering the quality of the two teams. Kansas City seemed to have all the advantages on the Seattle Reign but their comeback, like Sporting’s, ended with only a tie.

In the Digital Crawl, we hit a few more topics:

• SKC II
• MLS Playoff Expansion… again?!?!
• UEFA, Concacaf and Infantino
• Argentina punished

Here is a rundown of sections and start times:

• Intro – 0:00
• Sporting KC – 2:03
• KC Current – 1:23:46
• Digital Crawl – 1:33:07

Upcoming Games

• Sporting KC @ Atlanta United, SUN, August 23rd at 6:00PM CST (Wooden Spoon Battle)
• SKC II @ Tacoma Defiance, MON, August 24th at 9:00PM
• KC Current vs. North Carolina Courage, SAT, August 29th at 5:30PM
• Sporting KC vs. Vancouver Whitecaps, SAT, August 29th at 7:30PM
• SKC II @ Whitecaps 2, SUN, August 30th at 6:00PM

As a special gift to For the Glory KC listeners and KC Soccer Journal readers, Backheeled.com is giving away 30 days of their amazing, independent American soccer coverage for free. If you decide you want to turn that into a paid membership, they’ll give you 10 percent off too. Just follow this link!

Big thanks to Splitter Conspiracy (listen to them here) for our theme music made with the permission of the KC Cauldron. 

You can find For the Glory KC wherever you get your podcasts. Search “For the Glory KC” and be sure to subscribe! Here are some helpful links:

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Be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast. Five-star ratings and reviews will help others find the pod. On Spotify you can review on the mobile app by clicking the three dots. On Apple Podcasts, it’s much easier. If it’s not quite five-star worthy yet, feel free to let us know in the comments or on Twitter (@PlayFor90 or @ForTheGloryKC). Sheena essentially runs our FTGKC BlueSky, so that’s a great way to get her takes. 

You can follow us me on BlueSky (@ChadCSmith). Also, you can find the podcast on other social media platforms: @ForTheGloryKC on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook or you can email us at ForTheGloryKC at Gmail.