Bieler Set to Leave Kansas City? (UPDATED)

Over the past few days the rumors have started to pick up regarding Claudio Bieler and his departure from Sporting Kansas City. Some of the rumors have been again linking Bieler with a move to Barcelona SC in Ecuador. Bieler though has spent much of the last few days on Twitter engaging Barcelona fans and saying how the rumors are were not true.

Now comes word though that Bieler will in fact be leaving Kansas City and headed to Argentina to join up with Quilmes, in the Argentine Primera Division. An announcement could apparently come as early as Monday on the signing of the Sporting DP according to El Sol in Argentina.

The reports on Twitter are that Bieler's contract with Sporting will be terminated allowing the Argentine to leave Sporting and return to his home country.

Bieler started his Sporting career out well, scoring nine goals by mid-July in his debut season. But since 7/13/13, Bieler has scored just three league goals for Sporting in the last season and a half. Much of that has been due to a reduction in playing time as Dom Dwyer has really come onto the scene. Especially in 2014, where Bieler saw his minutes really tank as he started just four games and played just 421 league minutes.

In the end, Dwyer has just been a better fit for the system that Peter Vermes wants to play. Bieler isn't a bad striker, in fact he's one of the better pure finishers to wear Sporting's colors, but his style of play doesn't match up well with Vermes' high press, high pressure system that sees the forwards be extremely active in pressuring the opposing defense in the back. And with Vermes only playing one center forward, there isn't a lot of space for Bieler on the field.

This does open up a designated player spot for Vermes, Robb Heineman, and Sporting KC to utilize ahead of KC's primary transfer window opening up. Heineman has previously hinted at getting a pacy winger to come in and play opposite Graham Zusi on Sporting's font line. Whether that actually ends up happening, we'll wait and see. But honestly this is something that needed to happen. Sporting can't afford to have a designated player consistently sitting on the bench. The one thing that this does probably do, is that it forces KC to go back into the market for another forward. With all the moves that KC has made so far, they're left with Krisztian Nemeth as really the only center forward back up for Dwyer, and the talk is that he may end up as the team's left forward. So finding a forward that can back up Dwyer, or become the starter on the left wing, now becomes a priority for the team.

UPDATE

Last night, Aurelien Collin took to Twitter to congratulate Bieler on his apparent move. Bieler responded to him thanking him and thanking him for his help over the last two years.  You can't judge tone on Twitter, but this would certainly appear to confirm Bieler's departure from Sporting.