The combo meal of transfers appears to have developed in Thessaloniki as Sporting KC work to close the transfer of Spanish Attacking Midfielder Manu Garcia and appear to be close to acquiring his Aris teammate Right Winger Shapi Suleymanov as well.  We have a few reported details on the structure of this deal and why it’s happening in this manner, even if it caused one member of this podcast to get pre-emptively grumpy about what could appear to be a bulk discount strategy for player acquisition by the front office.

But, this wasn’t the only new player connected with Sporting Kansas City this week, as they have also reportedly put in a bid on 21 yo CB Bryan Okoh, currently with RB Salzburg.  Okoh has candidly not played a lot of soccer over the past couple seasons, and when he has, it has mostly been in the Austrian 2nd Division, not with the Salzburg first team. So this is another somewhat underwhelming player in profile based on what we can glean from the internet.  Obviously, those searches have limits, but it is hard to think this is a signing that could immediately come in and significantly improve the quality of SKC’s back line.

Sporting KC has wrapped up their Florida leg of preseason and is en route back to KC as we record this podcast before heading out to California for phase 2 of the preseason and the Coachella Valley Invitational this upcoming weekend.  They are unfortunately coming back with no wins across their 3 scrimmages, but did finally get on the score sheet today against Charlotte.  Perhaps the most notable information gleaned from these games came in the post game press conferences where we learned that it is unlikely any personnel are going to be added to the goalkeeping room, that a couple of the non-contract players in camp appear to have impressed, and that while not official yet, the process for acquiring players is progressing in a positive manner.

Finally we will discuss MLS releasing the details of what teams are participating in what non-league tournaments, including SKC’s potentially very limited non-league schedule, as well as talk about player enablement within a tactical structure in tactical corner.