How Sporting KC winger Daniel Salloi became a firm MVP candidate after two trying years

When Daniel Salloi left his native Hungary for the U.S. in 2014, chasing a career in professional soccer at age 18, he told his father that America could one day be “my country.”

The father, Istvan Salloi, understood his son’s passion. The edler Salloi played 15 years in Hungary and Israel, appearing in 163 games spanning six years in Israel, scoring 71 goals and winning two Israeli Championships.

Daniel described his father as a “king” in Israel, but as a teen he boldly told his dad he’d be “bossing around in America” before long.

He may have been joking, but as Major League Soccer’s 2021 regular season reaches its final stages this fall, Salloi stands a genuine chance of being crowned “king” of MLS: Still just 25, the Sporting KC winger is a legitimate MVP candidate.

With just six games remaining until the MLS playoffs, Salloi boasts a league-best 23 goal contributions (16 goals, seven assists) and the most non-penalty goals in the league (16). He’s one goal behind New England’s Ola Kamara in the chase for the MLS Golden Boot.

So the story of Daniel Salloi seems well-documented by now: He moved to America as a high schooler to join the Sporting Kansas City Academy, ascended quickly through its ranks, and made the SKC senior team in 2017.

But it’s not that simple.

A blistering 2018 season in which he scored 11 goals with 11 assists seemingly had Salloi on a trajectory toward stardom. Then came the 2019 season, in which he recorded just one goal and one assist in 28 appearances. Last year was even worse: no goals and no assists in just 165 minutes of game time.

Salloi hasn’t relished talking about those two seasons. He made that crystal clear in a post-game news conference. He understood being probed about his struggles, saying they were “fair questions to ask,” but he wanted to put the past behind him.

He’s a little more open now that he’s one of the best players in his new country.

Two bad seasons ... or one long one?

Salloi said the 2020 campaign seemed to drag on forever.

He was a young player entering the prime of his career, but he wasn’t getting the playing time he wanted and felt he deserved. He knew 2019 had been a major disappointment, but he didn’t feel like he was given a chance to make things better in 2020.

That helps explain why he’d get frustrated when people talked about “two bad seasons.” To him, it was more like one bad season — one bad, long season that extended through last year.

“In my head, we don’t know if I played bad or good last year,” he said. “So that’s why it’s tough.”

He talked with Sporting KC coach Peter Vermes about his playing time on multiple occasions. The two men discussed his future.

Salloi never wanted to leave Kansas City — it’s been his home since he was a teenager, and this is the club that gave him a chance here in the U.S. But sitting on the bench most of last year, he thought about playing someplace else.

Vermes was determined to keep Salloi in Kansas City. Salloi didn’t want to leave, Vermes reasoned. He just wanted more playing time, and that was understandable.

“I understand that everyone wants to play, I get that,” Vermes said. “But you also have to be playing well and better than the guys that are in front of you.”

The coach knew Salloi had the talent. Even as his playing time diminished, Vermes said, he stuck by Salloi’s side.

“I am probably one of the only people that defended him in that time,” Vermes said. “Everyone asked the question all the time, ‘Was that just a fluke in 2018?’ And I was always saying ‘No, you don’t do what he did as a fluke. You just can’t do that.’”

Shortly before the current season began, the pair came to an understanding. If Salloi still wasn’t seeing enough playing time, Vermes told him, they’d revisit the conversation about his future. The coach’s message was simple: Come in, work on both sides of the ball, do what you’re supposed to do in your position and everything else will fall into place. If you’re doing that, there should be no reason why you wouldn’t be playing.

Salloi surpassed last season’s total minutes in Sporting KC’s first four games this spring, scoring a goal and tallying an assist. And now, life is coming at him so fast that he can hardly keep up. He made the MLS All-Star team in August and earned his first international cap for Hungary a week later. (He’ll be back with the Hungarian national team next week for World Cup qualifiers.)

His coach was right. Produce, and the playing time would follow.

“This year I just wish I could have two weeks to celebrate something,” Salloi said. “And now every three days something is happening, which is amazing, but at the same time it’s going super fast.”

Rising to the top

Salloi could barely believe his eyes the first time he saw his name listed in mlssoccer.com’s MVP power rankings.

He’d always viewed such awards as plaudits as being reserved for players who were having “magical seasons.”

“It was amazing,” Salloi said. “I was like, ‘If I think about it, I deserve to be there.’”

He briefly dropped out of those MVP power rankings last week, with an accompanying article explaining that he’d scored just once since the All-Star game.

He responded with a goal-of-the-week candidate at FC Dallas. He took a smooth touch past his defender before nailing a shot from 25 yards out.

It was the type of goal an MVP scores, and it sprang from growth both personal and technical.

During those two lonely seasons, after games, Salloi would go home and re-watch old contests from when he had soared in 2018. He wanted to see and replicate how he’d previously played — to see what he’d done differently then and recapture it now. But as much as he re-watched the good times, he couldn’t pin down answers.

He’s since learned that this approach wasn’t helpful. Not to himself or his teammates.

He still watches game highlights, of course, but he does so with a different mindset.

“It’s important to think about those moments,” he said. “Because then I go home and think about it, watch it back, and in my head next time that I have this shot I’m just going to rip it.”

A few days before his goal against Dallas, Salloi took a shot from a similar area of the field against the Seattle Sounders. It sailed well wide of the target. He went home, figured out how to do better next time, and nailed it.

The next step for Salloi is nailing that goal against the likes of Seattle, too. To step up and be Sporting’s go-to guy in times of need against the biggest opponents.

“I always thought that it’s very important that if you want to become a clutch player, to show up on those games,” Salloi said. “I think that I have that in me.”

He sees himself as the type of player who can score double-digit goals and assists, citing teammate and good friend Johnny Russell as an example. That mindset might prevent Salloi from having another year like 2019.

He understands a season like that often “kills a career.”

Perhaps only half-jokingly, he noted that soccer superstars Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo can’t have two bad games in a row. He wants those expectations placed upon him, too.

Despite all that happened in 2019 and 2020, Salloi often asks himself a simple question: If he could have four mediocre seasons, or keep things as they’ve played out leading up to and including this possible MVP 2021 campaign, which would he choose?

He said he’d keep things exactly the same.

“Obviously it’s nothing something you can choose, but I’m just thinking in a way, there are much more amazing things happening to me right now,” he said. “So in a way, I always look at it that you get it back from life, so if you work hard you can get it back.”

“You never know if you’re going to have another season like this. You’ve got to grab these moments, because you never know.”

This story was originally published October 5, 2021 at 11:07 AM with the headline "How Sporting KC winger Daniel Salloi became a firm MVP candidate after two trying years."