On Matt Besler, the last of his kind, let go by Sporting Kansas City
The end came cold and not entirely unexpected, which is how these things usually go. Few athletes go out on top. Fewer still get to say when. This is reality. Time moves on, often quickly, especially in sports.
Matt Besler has lived a charmed soccer life. He’s worked for it, but he’s also had good fortune. That’s how the best careers go, and no matter what happens from here his name will someday be painted on the wall at Children’s Mercy Park next to other Sporting Kansas City legends.
Besler is no longer part of the only professional club he’s known, the one he grew up rooting for in Overland Park. The soccer term is that he’s out of contract. A man with no team. That news came in a conversation with Peter Vermes, the club’s technical director.
“It’s a relationship that I will always hold very dear to my heart,” Vermes said. “But in sports, a salary cap world, the idea that players, staff members will be with the club forever is not going to happen.
“He’s been a tremendous player for this club. He has helped build the brand, helped the competition on the field. He’s been an incredible ambassador of the sport and Sporting Kansas City. We thank him for everything that’s done.”
It is impossible to overstate how entwined Besler is with Sporting. He has more starts, more appearances, and more minutes than anyone in club history. This was actually his second job with the club. The first was as a ballboy, when he was a kid and the team was called the Wiz and the uniforms were those charmingly hideous rainbow outfits.
He is what Darren Sproles could’ve been if he played for the Chiefs. He is what Albert Pujols could’ve been for the Royals, or what the Royals hoped Bubba Starling would be here. He became to Sporting what Frank White was to the Royals — a Kansas City kid who became a star in his hometown. We don’t get that here often. Besler has lived a charmed soccer life.
Twelve years. Besler has defended Sporting’s goals for 12 years. He played his first game here at what is now called T-Bones Stadium, cutting in line for the portable toilet at halftime.
Twelve years. When Besler first arrived, it was still called the Sprint Center, and it was still new. Alex Gordon still played third base, and he wasn’t yet good. Larry Johnson took handoffs for the Chiefs. Tamba Hali was a young player. Patrick Mahomes was in middle school.
If Besler is not the best player in Sporting history, he is the most consequential. He is the bridge from the team’s irrelevance to a sellout streak that stretched for years and nine postseasons in the last 10.
He was the Major League Soccer defender of the year in 2012 — when Kansas City’s other pro teams stunk — and a member of the MLS Best XI that year and again in 2013, when Sporting won the MLS Cup, and none of that is what will keep his name alive in conversations here for a generation.
Besler became a regular for the United States Men’s National Team, and started all four games of the 2014 World Cup — the first Kansas City-area player to reach the world’s grandest sports event.
Besler has seen Kansas City’s relationship with soccer go from jokes about orange slices to deep civic pride. We are now a hub for the national teams, a major force in youth tournaments and officials training. We are a finalist for 2026 World Cup games, and sell T-shirts claiming to be the soccer capital of America.
Sporting has been the single greatest force behind that transformation, and for 12 years Besler has been its most consistent force on the field. The club has invested millions into youth soccer and an academy that helps turn boys into pros. They use Besler’s name constantly, and there is no telling how many lives that’s affected.
Soccer’s popularity has skyrocketed during Besler’s career. That’s more a coincidence of timing, of course, but his sports life could be the last of its kind. When he was a kid, he had no examples of American stars. Now, he is one, all done in the only city he’s ever called home.
Besler will be 34 when the next MLS season begins. That’s young for virtually any profession except the one he chose.
He is not the same player he was in 2012, or the one who started in the World Cup. That’s said without malice, only honesty. Stardom is fleeting. Besler’s playing time began to decline in 2016, and in 2020 he spent more time on the bench than ever before.
He did not immediately return a message on Wednesday, and Vermes did not share details of their conversation or what he believed Besler’s future to be. But in a social media post that thanked fans, teammates, and ownership, Besler wrote that he looked forward to free agency.
The next part of Besler’s life will involve change. There will be uncertainty. He is a husband now, and a father to young kids. Time moves on. He is smart, with connections everywhere in Kansas City and many places beyond. He was an academic All-American at Notre Dame, with a degree in psychology. The options will be his.
But no matter where he goes next, he made a ground-shifting career in his hometown out of talent, work, and a little luck. So, yes, athletes rarely get to say when it ends, but they do get to decide whether their sport or club or hometown are better for the effort.
On that last point, few Kansas Citians have had a more successful career in sports than Besler.
This story was originally published December 9, 2020 at 5:15 PM.