How Sporting Kansas City forward Daniel Salloi lost it all ... and then got it back
Daniel Salloi left for Hungary last winter, a destination some 5,000 miles from Kansas City, and even if the European country is still the place he calls home and still where his family resides, the distance offered perhaps the biggest draw.
Salloi, a 24-year-old Sporting KC forward, wanted to get away from where it had all gone wrong so quickly, so strikingly and so publicly, where even walking into the training facility had become a chore. At one point, his coach tossed him out of a practice, told him to shower and head home.
Only three years earlier, Salloi led Sporting KC in scoring. His no-look finish sealed up a spot in the 2018 Western Conference Finals, all the flare of a Jose Bautista bat-flip that his coach would describe as a forget you goal, except he didn’t use the word forget. That moment had shown the extreme confidence of a player who only recently realized he took the quality for granted.
But in the two ensuing seasons — 2019 and 2020 — the highlight instead prompted people to look back with a much different thought:
What happened to that guy?
“I know what it seemed like,” Salloi said. “Like I forgot how to play soccer.”
So there he sat, spending a winter in Hungary, contemplating his future, when he picked up the phone and dialed into a three-way call with his agent and Sporting coach Peter Vermes. A conversation that began with differing objectives would provide the backdrop for what you see now.
A rebirth, of sorts.
Or even better.
Salloi leads second-place Sporting KC with seven goals, which ranks third in all of MLS. His four game-winners are more than anyone in the league. Nobody has a better combination of goals and assists over the past seven weeks. He is playing the best soccer of his life, and that it comes on the heels of his worst makes it all the more special.
But the phone call that preceded all of this, which both parties credit as a necessary start-from-scratch conversation, well, Salloi had a different intention.
He wanted the fresh start.
But somewhere else.
“I did, yes,” Salloi said. “I felt like it was almost like a bad relationship with your girlfriend — you don’t want to say goodbye, but you also don’t want to stay. That’s how I really felt. That’s really what the phone calls were about.”
The downfall
Long before his first professional game, Salloi’s father began serving as his biggest and most honest critic. After matches, Salloi receives clips from his games, with his father’s commentary on what he could have done differently. Sometimes it’s the way he took a shot. Sometimes it’s just a decision he made in the match.
In late 2019, in the midst of a one-goal season that followed Salloi’s career year, his father’s critiques slowed ... and then altogether stopped.
It was, Salloi said, as though he didn’t want to pile on.
“After awhile, it was about trying to find a way out of this tough spot,” Salloi said. “But I was just stuck.”
In his own haphazard rankings scale, Salloi rated his confidence a zero, though, “if you can go minus, I would go minus.”
He scored 16 goals across all competitions in 2018 but got off to a slow start in 2019. Then he suffered an injury and things only got worse. He missed easy chances. Looked like a completely different player. Asked how someone could endure such a dramatic dip, Vermes replied with one word.
“Confidence,” he said.
Athletes in every sport battle it at some point. In baseball, hitters slump. In hockey, the world’s best goal-scorers endure droughts. In football, world-class quarterbacks are intercepted, and the best cornerbacks are burnt. It’s part of the profession.
The good ones, Salloi says he came to learn, can limit the length of the slumps in part because they believe they’ll be short-lived. They trust their ability and don’t let one bad shot affect the next. Salloi, though, would watch back on his 2018 highlights and wonder how to rediscover himself.
When he walked through Kansas City, he’d occasionally bump into someone ready to offer advice.
Hey, maybe before you shoot, fake a shot first and see what the goalkeeper does.
The next had different ideas.
Hey, I noticed you keep faking shots. Yeah, you shouldn’t do that.
Then the games would arrive. The ball at his foot, only the goalkeeper separating Salloi from breaking through, a million voices raced through his head.
“It was a mess,” Salloi said. “That’s why it’s so difficult to find it again. There are a lot of things in your head. It’s no doubt that I’m a good soccer player. It’s just, what did I lose and how do I get it back?”
Vermes said Salloi stopped doing the little things, the elements of his game that have made him so successful in 2021. As much as a duffed shot might have provided an obvious example of his shaken confidence to some, his lack of movement off the ball provided an even clearer example to the coach.
Vermes tried a few different approaches. He yelled. He encouraged. Eventually, he outright ignored him, hoping he’d play himself out of it.
But along the way, Vermes was adamant that a 16-goal scorer was still in there somewhere.
“I always had the mentality that (2018) wasn’t a luck year. It wasn’t a fluke,” Vermes said. “When you’re in the zone, you can’t explain it. When you’re out of the zone, you’re just trying to figure out how to get it back. You almost forget what it was like to be that guy.
“This game, it’s like 90% mental. When you get to this level, most guys have skill. All these guys can play. It’s really about the mental aspects of the game.”
The revival
By the time the ball reached his right foot in a June match against Colorado, Salloi had most of the goal open. He mis-hit it, he’ll admit now. Knocked it right down the middle, right into the goalkeeper.
And yet, some way, somehow, it ended up in the net anyway.
In the aftermath of the celebration, you can actually see Salloi laugh.
“I hit it terribly, and it still deflected in,” he said. “In 2019, it would go in the goal and somehow — maybe a bird flies in and knocks it back out.”
This is where player and coach disagree. Although Salloi calls his play “terrible” in 2019, he believes he didn’t catch many breaks, either. “I think everybody needs a little bit of luck,” he said.
Vermes is steadfast in his belief there is no such thing. A player, he insists, makes his own luck. He credits Salloi for sprinting down the middle of the field to be in the right spot to receive the pass. Salloi gave up on making those runs at times in 2019.
That’s truly where this turnaround began.
And the result of that offseason phone call.
Salloi felt his 2019 season had prevented him from getting much of a chance in 2020. He played so little in 2020 — just 165 minutes, fewer than two games’ worth — that he began driving from Sporting KC practice to play pick-up games with his buddies.
If he wasn’t going to play in 2021, he wanted out. Some Hungarian teams close to home were interested.
Vermes, however, promised him the chance — so long as he earned it. Forget about scoring. Do the little things right. Within just a few days at the club’s preseason training sessions, Vermes noticed a turnaround.
“Easy to see,” he said. “Easy.”
Salloi targeted the first 5-10 games. He needed a fast start. If he slumped in the middle of the year after scoring a couple of goals early, at least he’d have something to fall back on — a reminder of his abilities. If he dragged through a couple of months without a goal, well ...
He scored on opening night. The team awaited his arrival into the post-game locker room, then surrounded him in celebration. They knew what he’d been through. Knew how just one goal could change things.
Two months later, in the rankings of most MLS goals scored this season, he trails only Chicharito and Raul Ruidiaz, a pair of players whose salaries eclipse $6 million and $2 million, respectively. And guess what? The other elements of his game are back, too. Salloi leads all MLS forwards with 19 chances created. He’s tied for the team lead with three assists.
Earlier this week, the league website ranked him fourth in the MVP race.
“(Stuff) works out sometimes,” Salloi said.
He’s ready to move on now. He’s learned a lot from the trials and tribulations of 2019 and 2020 — better prepared for any scoring drought that might come his way this season — but he’s tired of talking about it all. This is the last interview he plans to do on the topic, if it’s up to him.
In a recent news conference, after he’d scored twice and assisted on another goal, Salloi was asked about the difference between this season and last year. He’s been asked about that often, actually, so often that he recently complained to some club staff members about it.
Just mention it the next time you’re asked about it, they told him.
So after his most recent news conference, asked about it once more, he took a literal deep breath. Then sighed. Then grinned.
“Well, I would like to, with all due respect, to ask everybody to stop talking about last year,” he said. “Because, yes, it was bad, and yes, I did not have enough confidence, and now I do.
“So, please, let’s talk about this year.”
This story was originally published July 4, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "How Sporting Kansas City forward Daniel Salloi lost it all ... and then got it back."