It's been an extremely busy day in MLS circles today as the trade window opened up and teams started to prepare their teams for next year. Sporting KC was active making a trade with the most active team of the day, Portland. The rumored trade last night of Michael Harrington for allocation money came off, sending the 6 year veteran to the Pacific Northwest. It'll be interesting to see what Kansas City does with the allocation money, but rumors are that KC could be busy the rest of this week with news as well.
Harrington was the team's second most tenured player in KC behind Eric Kronberg, having been with the club since being drafted in 2007. He scored the quickest goal in a debut, scoring just 3 minutes into his debut against DC United. His record was topped by CJ Sapong last year.
Harrington finishes his career in KC with the 9th most minutes played in league play in KC history 11,633 in 149 appearances, tying him for 8th place with Mo Johnston. He started 128 of those, tied with Josh Wolff for 9th. In all competitions, Harrington played 13,276 good for 11th on that list, in 170 appearances, set for 9th place on that list. Of those, 143 were starts, good enough for 12th on that list. In his career, Harrington scored 5 goals for KC, but none since 2008. In the past two seasons, Harrington has seen his minutes and appearances decrease due to the emergence of Seth Sinovic and Chance Myers. Harrington started on 16 games last year, and appeared in 23 games. This year it was even lower as Harrington only started 9 games and appeared in only 11, a career low for him. With his $125,000 salary it's tough to justify that for a bench player. And while it'd be nice to have an experienced veteran on the bench, Harrington has to be wanting to get himself more playing time as his career continues. Good luck to him.
Also announced today was that the team will not be picking up the option on defender Korede Aiyegbusi. The Englishman appeared in only 9 games, starting 2 over his 3 year career with KC, playing only 152 minutes. This year it was only 1 appearance for a total of 19 minutes for Aiyegbusi. He also made one US Open Cup and one USOC qualifier for KC in his career. Aiyegbusi will go into the reentry draft, the first stage of which takes place on Friday. Very few, if any of the players on this list will be taken in the first stage, the majority of the movement will take place next Friday in the second stage of the draft.
The departure of these two puts KC extremely low on the number of defenders on the roster. KC still has their 4 starters, Myers, Sinovic, Matt Besler (who is currently out of contract), and Aurelien Collin, KC has only 3 other defenders on the roster. Lawrence Olum, Kevin Ellis, and Kyle Miller. All the appearances for KC between those 3 in competitive games belong to Olum, save 1, a substitution appearance for Kevin Ellis in the Open Cup last year. There's no doubt though that there will be defensive depth brought in this offseason from one location or another.
Good luck to both Harrington and Aiyegbusi in their continued careers.
Who's next? Any rumors?
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