#TBT Kevin Souter and Open Tryouts

Thanks to a poster in the comments to yesterday's former player update, we know that Kevin Souter is still playing soccer, having moved back to Scotland, he is playing in the P&J Scottish Highland League for Deveronvale FC. With that pointed out to me I thought I'd use this week's Throwback Thursday to look at the one of the last players to make the KC roster through the team's open tryouts.

Back in 2008, after the club's last season at Arrowhead full time, the Kansas City Wizards held open tryouts ahead of the team's official preseason. Due to weather, the tryouts were moved from the Swope Park complex to the KC Sports Lodge. The tryout actually produced two signings for the Wizards and another that played in the US second division for a couple years. KC ended up signing Souter and fellow tryout participant, Nelson Pizarro after the 2008 MLS season started, Souter was signed in May of 2008 while Pizarro was signed in late April. The other open tryout participant was Youssouf Kante, who signed with the Seattle Sounders when they were still in the USL, and later played with the Minnesota Thunder.

Pizarro would be the first to make his debut for the first team, coming on as a substitute in the team's US Open Cup quarterfinal against the Sounders. He would also end up playing in three league games in the 2008 season before being waived early in the 2009 season.

Souter had the much more successful run with KC. Souter made his debut in the club's 2-0 win over the LA Galaxy at Arrowhead on September 13th. From there, Souter would appear in every game down the stretch for KC as they went 5-1-1 over the final seven regular season games to make the playoffs. Souter would end up starting four of those seven games, and scored his only goal for the club in the 79th minute of their 2-0 win over Toronto FC. Souter would also start both of the club's playoff games that year as they fell to eventual MLS Cup winners, the Columbus Crew. Souter would stick around one more season in Kansas City, but played just one game in the 2009 season for KC, a start in a 1-1 draw with the Galaxy.

After the season KC waived him, he was picked up by the MLS Sounders but never was offered a contract. From there Souter appeared to move to the Toronto area where he became a coach at Ryerson University before returning to Scotland.