Palmer-Brown Could be on the Way to Portugal

Reports came out today that Sporting KC could see another player depart from the team as defender Erik Palmer-Brown has been linked with a move to Portuguese club, FC Porto. First reported by Brian Sciaretta and then clarified by Sporting KC beat writer, Sam McDowell.

According to the reports, Palmer-Brown has left camp with KC in Arizona and is flying to Portugal to negotiate with the 27 time champions. McDowell is reporting that the move would be a loan for Palmer-Brown, not a transfer, at least not to start.

The US youth international has been a European transfer target since before the club signed him. Mainly the interest had been coming from Italian giant, Juventus, but now it looks like he'll head to Portugal, and you can bet that any loan deal for Palmer-Brown will likely have the option for Porto to make the loan permanent.

Palmer-Brown, Kansas City's third homegrown player signing has been with the club for three seasons appearing in 10 league games, starting six. Seven of those appearances and four of those starts came in the 2015 season for KC. In 2016 most people seemed to think that Palmer-Brown was a prime candidate to spend the season on loan to the club's USL team, the Swope Park Rangers. Instead, it would see that Palmer-Brown is set to go abroad for a loan. The question is how much playing time Palmer-Brown would actually get with Porto. Starting with the first team seems extremely unlikely at Porto, but Palmer-Brown could get more time with Porto B which plays in the Portuguese second division.

This potential move while not as big as the transfer of Krisztian Nemeth to Qatar won't be taken well by many KC fans in the aftermath of the Nemeth move. A number of KC fans will see Palmer-Brown's departure as just another move by the club to sell talented players to make money instead of building a winner. While Robb Heineman and Peter Vermes have always stated that they're not going to stand in the way of a player going to Europe if they want to, but fans on social media are starting to get frustrated with the perceived lack of ambition from the club with these recent moves.