Sporting KC’s Contract Situations at the End of the 2022 Season

With the 2022 Major League Soccer regular season having come to an end on Sunday, 14 of the league’s 28 teams turn their attention to 2023 while the remaining 14 battle for the MLS Cup.

Unfortunately, Sporting Kansas City find themselves on the outside looking in. They aren’t alone as they are joined by 2022 CONCACAF Champion League winners the Seattle Sounders, the 2021 MLS Cup winning New England Revolution, the 2021 MLS Cup runners up Portland Timbers, by far the league’s most expensive roster in Toronto FC and the inventors of soccer, Atlanta United. Interesting company.

While not much has changed since the last time we looked at the roster, it seems like a good bench post to mark the end of the season before a potential furry of offseason moves and rumors commence. There is only one change since we last updated this list in August. Daniel Salloi signed a new contract through the end of the 2026 season and he’ll avoid free agency.

Out of Contract

The following players are out of contract following the season. That means they either will be eligible for free agency or required to go through one of the many MLS roster allocation processes, like the Re-Entry Draft. Free agency is looser in 2023 with players now needing to be only 24-years-old and have five years of MLS service, versus 28/8 before.

One other note on players out of contract is they can sign contracts in other leagues as of right now. They just have to be six-months away from being out of contract and we’ve long past that point.

Expiring Deals: Tim Melia, Roger Espinoza, Andreu Fontas, Felipe Hernandez

Contract Options

These players are not as free as the above players as they have team-held contract options for at least the 2023 season. What that means is the team can choose to decline their option(s) at any point and then they would disperse to one of the aforementioned allocation options (or go abroad). Typically these announcements come quickly after the season, but it appears teams have until November 14th this year.

TL;DR — These are deals the team can get out of if they wish to move on.

2023 Option Only: Graham Zusi, Cam Duke, Khiry Shelton, Kendall McIntosh, Nicolas Isimat-Mirin

2023 & 2024 Option: Kaveh Rad, Kortne Ford

That leaves 11 players that can be easily moved on from at any moment. The Blue Testament will break this down further tomorrow in terms of money and roster designations (DPs, internationals, U-22, etc.).

Until then, here are all 27 players on the roster as of today, including their ages based on a published date of October 11th.

*Gadi Kinda probably isn’t a DP anymore going into next season, but we’ll wait for something more official and he is as of today.