Sporting Sign Salloi to Homegrown Contract

Sporting KC continued to add pieces to their team this offseason as today the club announced that they'd signed their fourth homegrown player in club history. The club announced that they'd signed Daniel Salloi to a homegrown player contract. The Hungarian moved to the United States in August of 2014 as an AFS exchange student. He spent the 2014-2015 season with the Sporting KC academy before moving back to Hungary where he signed an amateur contract with Ujpest FC in the Hungarian top flight. During his run with Ujpest, Salloi scored seven goals and added four assists in 16 games across all competitions.

Right away he would appear to become forward depth behind the team's starter, Dom Dwyer and countryman, Krisztian Nemeth, but at 19 he could also see time with the Swope Park Rangers this season as well. For those that thought that KC was going to take a forward in the Superdraft tomorrow this would certainly appear to change that likelihood now that KC takes a forward tomorrow.

This signing as a whole is very interesting to me, not only because I'm excited about the prospect of Salloi, as he appears to have the tools to become a good player for KC, but because of how KC acquired him. Up until this signing only three teams had signed fewer homegrown players than the number that KC had signed, three. And very few teams in the league hadn't signed a homegrown player in the over two years since Kansas City signed Erik Palmer-Brown as their third homegrown player. The lack of signings and the rumors of Eric De Julio not being offered a homegrown player contract were beginning to get me to doubt KC's ability to use the system to bring in players. Not that I wanted KC to sign a player just to sign one, plenty of MLS teams seem to have done that over the years as plenty of homegrown players have made few to no appearances for the clubs that signed them.

The signing may cause some grumbling among other teams and fans regarding how KC was able to get Salloi on a homegrown contract considering he was playing in the Hungarian first division in the fall, but the key is the amateur contract Salloi was under at Ujpest. Basically it would be similar, but not exactly like current college players playing in the PDL during the summer. The difference being that Salloi was doing it at a higher level for the most part than what the PDL is. Another issue would be the fact that he's "homegrown" when he was only in KC for a short time. Overall Sporting may have well found a couple loopholes in the homegrown player rule that they were able to exploit to get themselves a very talented, young player who could be a big steal for KC.