Silly Season: Portuguese Striker Linked to Sporting KC

With Christmas passing and New Years rapidly approaching (hours away at the moment of this writing) not much has been going on in Sporting Kansas City news. The loosest of rumors are leaking out of the Polish first division.

Portuguese striker Marco Paixao and his twin brother, Flavio Paixao are being rumored to want to come to Major League Soccer. The first link above has him linked to Sporting KC and his brother to the LA Galaxy but another source from further back has Marco linked to the Galaxy.

Come January, when he’ll be six months from being out of contract, Marco will be free to negotiate with anyone to move on a free transfer in the summer of 2018. That wouldn’t do anything to add reinforcements for the first half of the season and seems very unlikely to be the Designated Player bombshell many SKC fans are hoping for.

Additionally, both Paixao’s are 33-years-old. That’s obviously not a long term solution, but Sporting KC seem very likely to be geared up for a “win now” situation in 2018. And the thing they’ve lacked — goals -- Marco has provided in spades. Since joining Ekstraklasa (Polish first division) side Lechia Gdańsk in 2016 he has scored 27 goals.

The Polish first division may sound familiar as it’s the league that the Chicago Fire’s Nemanja Nikolić came from before 2017 and went on to score a MLS best 24 goals in 2017. If SKC could get some of that production from Marco Paixao they’d be thrilled. Paixao led the Polish league in scoring last season with 18 goals.

The rumor does make a little bit of sense as he is Portuguese and SKC have had a strong connection there in the past.

He mostly plays center forward but has spent time on the wings. As for some nonsense data on Marco, Transfermarkt has his value at 750,000 Euros. Also, his FIFA 18 ranking is 72 overall. For comparison Diego Rubio’s rating is a 68, but that was mostly based on him being a backup when that came out at the beginning of the season. He was a 73 before he came over to MLS (remember FIFA puts a lot of weight on the league a player plays in). That said, Nikolic was a 75 both before and after coming to MLS but has cards all the way up at 88 (‘cause the dude scored 24 goals).

This rumor fits the mold of the Mauro Boselli rumor in that he’s an older striker who has a history of goal scoring who could probably help right away. Especially since Boselli sounds like he’s staying put.

What do you think of this potential signing? Let us know in the comments, assuming you are currently sober enough to read this story and not out partying hard to end 2017.