Offseason Guides: Montréal and Sporting KC march into new eras

A reminder that I’m going to being doing two of these on Mondays and two on Thursdays until all 30 teams are done. We’ll see how much we all enjoy the twice-weekly cadence.

And a reminder that the post-mortems for MLSsoccer are here:

• Western Conference dregs
• Eastern Conference dregs
• Wild Card losers

More to come, obviously, as the weak are culled from the playoff herd.

Ok, in we go:

Montréal Impact

2025 finish: 28th overall, 13th in the east on 28 points. Yuck.

Biggest question: Do the Saputo kids actually have a vision and a budget?

Back in late summer the team announced that Corey Wray, who’d been the club’s “director of soccer” for a little under a year, had departed the club, and that owner Joey Saputo’s kids, Luca and Simone, would join club president and CEO Gabriel Gervais in plotting the new way forward.

This, as you could imagine, raised some eyebrows around the league. Wray is a well-respected front-office operator who’d been assistant GM for two of the more memorable and successful teams (Toronto FC of the mid-late 2010s; the Columbus Crew of the first half of this decade) of the league’s modern era. Luca and Simone, meanwhile, are mostly unknowns.

But! But just about the first thing that happened after making the shift was that CFM signed Iván Jaime from FC Porto.

A DP No. 10 of this quality1, even if only on loan? That type of player always seemed beyond Montréal’s resources. And while Jaime didn’t exactly light the league up, he sure did pass the eye test and the underlying numbers (very small sample size, but still) are screaming that he’s going to be excellent next year.

They have a purchase option. They have a few other exciting attackers. Is this really going to happen? And could there be more Jaime-type signings to follow?

Top winter priority: Defense? Central midfield? Either or both.

For what it’s worth I like the idea they’ve committed to with their central defense, picking up young, high-upside players like Efrain Morales and Jalen Neal from around the league. I hope that’ll continue as the org enters its new era.

But is that where they’ll use their open DP slot? If we assume they’ll retain Jaime and we assume they’ll opt for the 2/4/22 roster build model they have one DP to add, and it just feels like central midfield makes a lot more sense than center back.

State of the Roster: Thin, though in less flux than you’d think. Prince Owusu showed that he can be a reliable No. 9 in this league, and Dante Sealy finally started to match productivity (9g/2a in 2500 minutes) to his potential:

There were actually a couple of goals like that!

With young Hennadii Synchuk (eye-catching, if not yet productive) on the other wing and Jaime pulling the strings, there’s a pretty obvious starting group.

It gets less obvious behind them. Sam Piette is still there, and still probably a starter, but they really did lack for a high-quality No. 8. And the fullbacks were not exactly sources or strength, while those young CBs mostly struggled. At least on-loan goalkeeper Thomas Gillier was a revelation; as long as he’s there, there’s not much worry about the No. 1 kit.

Point is, there’s lots of places for them to potentially upgrade, and a need for depth everywhere.

I really, really hope they remain as willing to push kids through their academy and into the first team in the years to come as they’ve been over the past five years.

• 2026 TAM players: Owusu, Opoku
• 2026 U-22 players: Neal, Synchuk
• 2026 DPs: Jaime

Where the XI stands now: They could roll out an XI that’d be fun if not particularly good, though again, I do expect them to try to upgrade at central midfield and probably center back, while adding a few new attackers and fullbacks for now-permanent head coach Marco Donadel to integrate.

4-2-3-1:

• GK: Gillier
• LB: Petrasso
• LCB: Morales
• RCB: Neal
• RB: Guboglu
• DM: Piette
• CM: ???
• LW: Synchuk
• AM: Jaime
• RW: Sealy
• FW: Owusu

Things to know:

• Both Jaime and Gillier’s loans run until the end of June, so there’s no rush on a decision. But I bet the fanbase would celebrate like mad if both were exercised early.
• Montréal are a selling club, so don’t be at all surprised if they move, save, Sealy, Neal or Morales if the price is right. Could be inside the league, or out.
• I’m assuming the 2/4/2 roster build model, but they’re already rolling nearly $2m worth of GAM into next season and, as you can see above, they’re not exactly overloaded with TAM players. So there’s a world in which it makes sense for them to go to the 3/3 model and either buy two new DPs, or absorb another team’s out-of-favor DPs into their roster (as they attempted with the now-departed Giacomo Vrioni). That way you get a swing on a high-upside guy without forking over a transfer fee.

Sporting KC

2025 finish: 15th – dead last – in the West, and 27th overall. And by far the worst underlyings in the league.

Biggest question: Who’s going to be the new head coach?

For a while the biggest question was “who’s going to be the new CSO?” But that case is closed now that Sporting’s been able to lure David Lee from NYCFC to the Paris of the Plains.

I think Lee’s motivation here was simple: He wants to be in an org where he gets to call the shots and isn’t simply another cog in a global machine. My sense, in talking to people around the league, is that Lee was frustrated by CFG mandating a constant stream of young, high-risk imports instead of proven winners who could elevate the Pigeons to true contender status.3

He almost certainly won’t have to worry about that level of interference in KC. And he’ll almost certainly get final say on who the new head coach will be.

For what it’s worth, I can’t imagine it’ll be Kerry Zavagnin. He definitely got the team to fight for a while, and he wasn’t afraid of playing academy kids – both good things. But this was a pretty poor side throughout the entire year, and my guess is a clean break with the Vermes era (of which Zavagnin was a huge part) is coming.

Top winter priority: Rebuild the whole damn roster.

Here’s a couple of graphs from Sporting’s end-of-season roster announcement:

Sporting has declined 2026 contract options for Tim Leibold, Nemanja Radoja, Ryan Schewe, Khiry Shelton and Mason Toye, while loan spells for Alan Montes and Santi Munoz have ended. Sporting is continuing to negotiate with Schewe and Munoz.

In addition, the following six players are out of contract and will not return to the club: Andrew Brody, Joaquin Fernandez, Logan Ndenbe, Memo Rodriguez, Erik Thommy and Robert Voloder.

That is literally millions off the cap, including almost every TAM player and both of their remaining U22s. As it stands they have exactly 12 guys signed for next year.

State of the Roster: Uhhh, I guess I already kind of covered that in the previous section. Lee cut this group down to the bone and while you could argue there’s maybe a buyout coming, I’m not sure I see the value in that.

So as it stands, any even remotely ambitious CSO would see this as a fun-as-hell sandbox to play around in. He’s got the chance to turn them into an almost entirely new team, and by declining almost every option on the roster4 he showed he intends to do exactly that.

• 2026 TAM players: Salloi, Suleymanov
• 2026 U-22 players: n/a
• 2026 DPs: Joveljic, Garcia

Where the XI stands now: They’re basically an expansion club that already has two quality DPs.

Those DPs – No. 9 Dejan Joveljic and No. 10 Manu Garcia5 – as well as a handful of intriguing academy kids and a couple of pretty decent TAM wingers are the only ones currently on the roster, and of that bunch only Joveljic and Garcia are the ones I’m convinced are surefire starters. I’d wager folding money on that; the rest… all of them are in for a fight. Some of them might win that fight, and some of them will assuredly lose and become squad players.

I don’t even know what formation to put them in, so I’m just going to take a stab at a 4-2-3-1:

• GK: ???
• LB: ???
• CB: ???
• CB: Miller
• RB: ???
• DM: ???
• CM: Davis
• LW: Salloi
• AM: Garcia
• RW: New DP???
• FW: Joveljic

Things to know:

• I remain high on Jake Davis. He’s a pressing machine who should work at a really high level as a No. 8 if he’s next to an elite, orchestrating d-mid. I like him much less as a right back.
• I’m assuming the 3/3 roster build since they’ve got nearly $2m GAM already banked, and the very obvious place to sign a new DP is on the wing (either side will do).
• They’ve got their first-round SuperDraft pick still, which is fourth overall. Lee made good use of the draft during his time in New York, and Sporting, of course, once upon a time built a borderline dynasty through the draft.
  Food for thought.

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