Final 2019 Sporting KC Salaries Released

Twice a year the Major League Soccer Players Association (MLSPA) puts out salary data on all of their players. Today was that day!

Sporting Kansas City fans already had a pretty good idea what what their players were making, but now a few more players are added to the list. New to the list are left back Luis Martins and Homegrown midfield signings Cameron Duke and Felipe Hernandez.

Martins comes in at what is now the highest paid left back on the team at $240,000. That eclipses Jimmy Medranda ($155,004) and Seth Sinovic ($143,000).

The two Homegrown midfielders Duke and Hernandez, unsurprisingly, are down towards the bottom in pay as they are both on the Reserve Roster. Duke has a guaranteed compensation of $69,250 while Hernandez comes in at $56,250. Likely Duke got some sort of signing bonus to push him above the minimum of $56,250 which is spread over the life of his deal. This makes some sense as there were rumors Duke would end up in Germany after he trained with Bayern Munich.

There were some other changes to note, specifically at the top of the roster. Felipe Gutierrez and Johnny Russell, the teams two highest paid players, had their numbers come down slightly. Gutierrez went from $1,165,000 to $1,649,999.96 (four whole cents) and Russell went from $1,700,000 to $1,449,999.96 ($250,000.04 — we found Felipe’s four cents). These changes once again make Gutierrez the teams highest paid player.

It could be that there were mistakes in the last release (or these could be mistakes). The variance probably has something to do with bonus structure or the way the MLSPA reports salaries. Peter Vermes told The Blue Testament in preseason that the numbers are notoriously misreported. Paul Tenorio has a good story on why the numbers are so confusing. Essentially MLS and the MLSPA do the math different around bonuses and other contract structures (but that story is a good read regardless).

Also taking a small bump down is Daniel Salloi who went from $144,125 to $139,624.96 ($4,500.04). Maybe he didn’t hit the likely bonus of goals scored? Too soon?

Gianluca Busio saw a minor raise from $90,000 to $92,500 ($2,500).

There were also quite a few tiny changes. Matt Belser dropped 36 cents. Botond Barath is up 41 cents. Roger Espinoza went up four cents (maybe these are Gutierrez’s pennies). Tyler Freeman went down eight cents. Hurtado is down four cents. Nicolas Hasler is down 33 cents. Tim Melia is down 33 cents. Krisztian Nemeth is down 29 cents. Gedion Zelalem is down 33 cents. Adrian Zendejas is up four cents. Graham Zusi is up 41 cents (an undeserved raise, perhaps). And finally Eric Dick saw a 42 cent decrease. Probably all weird rounding errors.

More important to some fans after a rough year is the salaries that have been cleared off the books. Since the last update SKC have released or traded two players. Gone are Yohan Croizet ($730,008) and Kelyn Rowe ($326,400). That clears north of $1 million in salary ($1,056,408) that can go towards other players in 2020.

For the full numbers we have that for you below.