Sporting Kansas City lands high-scoring striker from L.A. ahead of 2025 MLS season
Sporting Kansas City completed a blockbuster transfer acquisition on Saturday, landing striker Dejan Joveljic from the reigning MLS Cup champion L.A. Galaxy.
The news supercharges what had been a relatively slow Major League Soccer offseason for Sporting KC.
Joveljic, 25, scored 22 goals with seven assists in 33 games across all competitions in 2024. He scored the winning goal in the MLS Cup Final, helping the Galaxy win a record sixth MLS Cup.
Tom Bogert, MLS transfer insider with Give Me Sport, reported Friday that a deal could be near. According to Bogert, Mexican giant Tigres was also trying to acquire Joveljic, but Sporting KC’s offer apparently won out.
Since joining the Galaxy in 2021, Joveljic has scored 34 goals and provided 13 assists in 106 MLS regular-season matches. He’s scored seven goals and provided two assists in seven MLS Cup playoff games. In total, he scored 41 goals with the Galaxy.
For a player who is just 25, Joveljic boasts a fairly extensive goal-scoring resume. His pro career includes stints with Red Star Belgrade in Serbia, Wolfsburger AC in Austria, Eintracht Frankfurt in Germany and Anderlecht in Belgium.
He has also represented Serbia at both the youth and senior national team levels. He’s scored 85 career goals and tallied 27 career assists.
Striker Alan Pulido departed Sporting KC before the preseason began. That created need at the position. The club also recently added MLS veteran Mason Toye to play alongside William Agada.
According to a source, Joveljic will receive a new contract with Sporting KC, making him a designated player. His original MLS contract was due to expire at the end of the 2025 season.
Sporting KC will pay the Galaxy a transfer fee — reportedly in the $4 million range — via a new intra-league cash transfer system announced by MLS last month. The system is similar to player movement outside of MLS via cash-for-player transactions, rather than player-for-player transactions.
Previously, the amount one club could offer another was capped by its own coffer of allocation money. The new rule allows teams to spend unlimited cash to acquire players from other MLS teams, provided that all contracts fit the league’s salary-cap guidelines.
In swaps utilizing this system, the only thing that can be exchanged for a player is cash — no combination of draft picks, international slots, players, or allocation money.
Clubs can use this system to acquire up to two players per season (or trade away up to two).
That’s not all ...
Sources have also confirmed to The Star that Sporting KC is finalizing a deal to acquire two players from the same Greek team.
Manu Garcia, a midfielder, and Magomed Suleymanov, a winger, are teammates at Aris Saloniki.
Garcia, 27, is an attacking midfielder from Spain. He came up through the Manchester City academy before spending longer-term stints in France and with Sporting Gijón in Spain. He would likely be a designated player for Sporting KC.
Suleymanov, who goes by “Shapi,” is a 23-year-old Russian from the Dagestan region near Azerbaijan. He spent his younger years at FC Krasnodar in the Russian Premier League, with loans to Hapoel Be’er Sheva in Israel and Aris (before moving there last summer).
Shapi primarily plays off the right in a style reminiscent of former Sporting KC star Johnny Russell, cutting inside and unleashing curling shots off his left foot. He is also an adept taker of free kicks.
Sporting KC begins its 2025 season on Feb. 18 with a CONCACAF Champions Cup match against Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami club at Children’s Mercy Park.
