Sporting KC protects 19 players from new St. Louis team in 2022 MLS Expansion Draft
Less than a week removed from LAFC’s Major League Soccer championship and official closure on games for the 2022 season, Sporting Kansas City on Thursday produced a list of players it’s protecting from acquisition by the league’s new St. Louis franchise via Friday night’s MLS Expansion Draft.
St. Louis City FC will enter the league for the 2023 season, presumably competing in the Western Conference alongside Sporting. If that happens, the two sides will play each other multiple times each season.
Sporting KC’s “protected” list includes 19 players. Homegrown players under age 25 are automatically protected from the draft, meaning SKC up-and-comers Ozzie Cisneros, Jake Davis, Cam Duke, Felipe Hernandez, Kayden Pierre, John Pulskamp and Kaveh Rad are automatically exempt from the pool from which St. Louis will draw.
Sporting used its 12 remaining slots to protect:
Defenders: Kortne Ford, Logan Ndenbe, Robert Voloder, Graham Zusi
Midfielders: Gadi Kinda, Erik Thommy, Remi Walter
Forwards: Willy Agada, Alan Pulido, Johnny Russell, Daniel Salloi, Marinos Tzionis
The following players, meanwhile, were left unprotected, meaning they could potentially be picked by St. Louis during the 2022 MLS Expansion Draft: Andreu Fontás, Roger Espinoza, Nicolas Isimat-Mirin, Kendall McIntosh, Tim Melia, Uri Rosell, Khiry Shelton and Ben Sweat.
Somewhat surprisingly, veteran Sporting KC players Roger Espinoza, Tim Melia and Nicolas Isimat-Mirin are also unprotected. Observers are left to wonder what that might mean for Sporting’s 2023 roster.
If a free agent is selected in the expansion draft, he could simply choose to not sign with St. Louis and instead wait for free agency to begin. At that point, the player would be free to sign wherever he pleases. Fontás, Espinoza and Melia do not have contract options and could thus fall into this category.
If a player has a club option, St. Louis could negotiate a new contract or exercise that player’s club option. But it would make little sense for St. Louis to select a player in that scenario — what if the player was dug in and opted not to sign?
This makes it notable — or at least worthy of conjecture — that Sporting KC and USMNT veteran Graham Zusi, who has an option, was protected, while Isimat-Mirin, who also has an option, was not.
Sporting KC is expected to announce its end-of-year roster decisions in the next few days. The league’s deadline for doing so is Monday.
As MLS has grown, expansion teams have more money with which to build out rosters thanks to transfers outside the league. And the number of players picked from existing rosters by newcomer teams like St. Louis has shrunk from 10 to five.
In previous years, it was more of a guarantee that existing teams would talent to a new team via the MLS Expansion Draft. And Sporting KC has lost players to expansion before.
In 2011, Seth Sinovic was selected by the Montreal Impact but traded back to Kansas City for Davy Arnaud. Sporting KC lost backup goalkeeper Alec Kann to Atlanta United in 2016; Latif Blessing to LAFC in 2017; and Jimmy Medranda to Nashville SC in 2019.
Friday night’s MLS Expansion Draft will be broadcast live on Youtube at 6 p.m. Central Time.