Sporting KC re-signed Salloi, Ellis and Wright Cut

With the start of the season just a few days away, Sporting Kansas City made it official today on the contract extensions for Ike Opara and Tim Melia, which we had reported on back in January. What we didn’t know was that Daniel Salloi was given a new contract as well.

Melia’s deal will run through 2020 and have no option year (unlike what was previously reported) and Opara’s deal runs through 2019 with an option for 2020. Salloi is also signed through 2019 with options for both 2020 and 2021. No word on the salaries but that information will likely come out in April when the MLS Players Union releases their first set of data for 2018.

While it was good news for some, it was bad news for others. Sporting KC announced the releases of Kevin Ellis and Zach Wright. Both players were Homegrown signings but with far different career paths up to this point.

Ellis signed all the way back on February 18, 2011. A whopping seven years ago. He was the second Homegrown player in club history. Over his career with SKC he would make 68 regular season appearances (58 starts) for 5,389 minutes and would add five goals and five assists, primarily playing at center back. The only current players on the team longer than Ellis were Matt Besler and Graham Zusi.

Back in January it was reported that both Ellis and Soony Saad were being shopped (Saad has also since been waived). Ellis was even training with FC Dallas at one point. One assumes Sporting couldn’t find a trade partner and were forced to cut their losses since the teams had agreed to let him step away from the team (since the CBA prevents teams from suspending players). It’s being reported he’s now on trial with the Chicago Fire (I tried to look on Twitter but then remembered Ellis blocked me). Our own Ben Gartland lives in Chicago and will promptly be dispatched to Toyota Park to investigate.

Zach Wright is a far different story than Ellis. He had just signed his Homegrown contract (Sporting KC’s seventh ever) on January 17th of this year! After just over a month with the team he was released. Many fans assumed he would spend the season on loan with the Swope Park Rangers. It’s always possible he re-signs with SPR, but that seems unlikely. The eighth Homegrown signing was Matt Lewis and he has already spent time with SPR during the preseason.

Wright spent the first leg of preseason with Sporting KC making three appearances for 135 minutes but wasn’t featured at all during the second leg. There have been two preseason games for Swope since then, a 2-2 draw to the Tulsa Roughnecks and a 1-1 draw with Creighton University in which Wright did not appear in either while Lewis appeared in both.

Wright just finished college at the University of North Carolina and was set to join former teammate Colton Storm for the 2018 season. Now with Wright gone and Storm’s spot on the depth chart in question, it’s possible neither player makes it through the season. Storm sent this ominous tweet just the other day.

Robert Rusert from TBT is going to training tomorrow and will see if the team has any further information on the two releases. The two cuts brings the roster down to 28 players. Community member Chzbro (so insightful but a terrible username) threw out the possibility that all the Reserve and Supplemental roster spots were taken and the Wright move could free one of those up. If you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, Mike Kuhn does a nice breakdown of that.

Here is the full roster as of today.