Sporting KC pledges to spend more. Here’s what that means — and when it will happen

Sporting KC introduced a new general manager Tuesday, and for an organization that has called one person its de facto general manager for nearly two decades, let’s start there:

It’s a change.

Whether it’s a shakeup to a front office that Peter Vermes has led for those nearly two decades or more simply adding a voice to the room — Mike Burns’ title is the sporting director, by the way — will play out in the coming months or potentially years. The evidence suggests the latter. Burns, after all, will still report to Vermes.

His arrival prompted the reason for Tuesday’s news conference.

The reason for this column is the potential for a more important change to Sporting’s future:

Money.

Sporting Kansas City ownership says it is prepared to break from its spending history over the next four years, owner Mike Illig told The Star in a phone conversation, echoing a message Vermes relayed earlier Tuesday.

Vermes and Illig were vague when pressed for exact numbers, and intentionally so because there is actually room for the budget to grow; but if we’re being honest, it wouldn’t take much to outspend the history. Sporting has devoted somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 million total to transfer fees over the past 16 years, as its league counterparts have poured finances into their rosters. (It’s estimated by transfermarkt that at least five single players have cost that amount.)

Sporting’s last notable spend in the market came during a cycle that concluded with the additions of striker Alan Pulido and midfielder Gadi Kinda ahead of the 2020 season — and the club finished first and third, respectively, in the Western Conference the next two seasons.

It’s been a minute.

So you’re probably asking the same question I had: How much more are we talking?

From what I’m told in conversations with multiple sources, the club’s plan calls for them to “significantly” eclipse their 16-year history during this four-year cycle alone.

They could technically eclipse that 16-year history in a single year during this four-year blueprint, one source told me. If averaged annually, their budget more than doubles any past allowance with which Vermes has operated and, if executed as outlined, will place Sporting in the top half, or perhaps top third, of spending in the league.

“It’s unrealistic as owners to think you can be in the bottom quartile of spending and expect top-quartile results,” Illig told me. “This is a matter of bringing yourself up with the rest of the league. I want to provide that value to the fans.

“We were ahead of the game in creating these new buckets of money. But now we have to play the game as everyone else has played the game.”

It’s time.

Past time, really.

The league has outgrown Sporting’s get-by-with-less philosophy — which explains why they aren’t getting by with less. They aren’t getting by at all.

Sporting, at 0.81 points per match, needs to do a lot of things better. To be clear, some of those stretch beyond player identification or acquisition and include Vermes in the title he still has. I discussed that a month ago — how an honest evaluation should illustrate that the lack of recent spending cannot be used as a broad-strokes excuse for four wins in 21 matches.

But it’s one of them.

A team should anticipate that its offseason expenses will correlate to its on-field results, even if it’s not a straight line. And at the moment, those two things each fit one adjective I’ve used in the past:

Stale.

Sporting owners determined they prefer Vermes digging them out of this, even as we can debate what’s responsible for the hole itself, with Burns overseeing player acquisition under his umbrella. The owners are offering them franchise-unprecedented money as their tool.

So, what’s their plan with it?

Vermes presented that during a meeting last month with the team’s full ownership group. He included the increased budget proposal, which he derived from expected transfer fees associated with positions of need — both immediate and future.

The immediate, which includes adding TAM (targeted allocation money) players as early as this summer, will get more of the buzz, and I understand that, given Sporting’s record. But it’s the latter part — preparing for the future — that provides the real opportunity Sporting cannot squander ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup that will breathe life into the league and in particular its success stories.

Vermes last operated with a multiyear budget pre-COVID, which was north of $20 million and culminated in the Pulido and Kinda additions at the end of 2019. A couple of months earlier, ownership had pledged to increase its transfer budget in pursuit of a center forward and an attacking midfielder. They got both. Vermes spent barely half of what ownership had approved to land them.

This re-tooling includes a larger budget over the next four seasons.

Since the COVID-affected 2020 season, which prompted a financial reset, Sporting has operated without a short- or long-term budget for incoming transfers, instead asking Vermes to request approvals on a case-by-case basis. That handcuffed transactions. Whatever you think of who should be in charge of the operation, this much is true: If you don’t know what the next move can be, or whether it will be approved financially, it’s a bit more difficult to pull the trigger on a current move.

“It was probably unfair of us to ask him to do it that way, because he’s always thinking 10 steps ahead,” Illig said. “So giving him a budget that spans over the years, he can see the pieces of the puzzle come together.”

Those pieces? Most immediately, Sporting needs an attacking midfielder, the proverbial No. 10, after losing Kinda last winter and failing to replace him. That tops Vermes’ list, too, he told me, though he said more than once the overall priority is becoming a better defensive team. Thus, the list expands quickly to include central defenders and another midfielder, along with potentially a winger.

Or, get this, the ability to mix and match.

That’s what the increased budget does. Actually, it’s what having any budget does. It paves the way for whoever is in charge (and Vermes twice underscored this will see the bulk of Burns’ time) to choose precisely how to spend it, when to spend it and on whom to spend it, all while knowing the leftovers are also his to spend. Make one move based on the possibility of another.

It’s not just about the amount of the budget, in that case. It’s about its existence.

Vermes told The Star he has two targets for a summer transfer window that opens July 18, each of which would fall into the TAM range — above a maximum salary cap charge but below the designated player threshold. He is attempting to sign one player in the summer and add the other in the winter window, when Sporting’s roster flexibility will match its newfound financial flexibility.

Sporting has 17 players either out of contract or with a team option at season’s end, and it will have two designated player openings.

That flexibility can provide a future lesson: Sporting could benefit from staying shorter term with its future non-DP deals. And my words here, not his: The club also needs to prioritize injecting some new personality types into the team.

It is fair to assume a high percentage of that group is playing for its future over these next four months. It should be just as fair, Vermes replied, to assume there will be changes regardless of what happens over these next four months.

“I see the winter window and the summer window — I see us going after it there,” Vermes said. “We’re trying to search for a bunch of guys in the winter window. We’re getting on that now. We want to start with those guys at the beginning of the season.”

There will be some strategic maneuvering within the four-year outline. Sporting certainly doesn’t plan to spend it all on one transfer, to state the obvious, nor does Vermes envision spending it all in one or two windows.

The very nature of the plan — the one Vermes presented — was to provide a model to avoid the valleys that Sporting has encountered in recent seasons.

The targets in the immediacy would fill gaps that have been present throughout the season and, honestly, probably before it began. Sporting has to get out of that game. The budget provides the opportunity for future targets to match the anticipation of what will soon become a need rather than what already is needed.

“We now have the ability to have a holistic view — it’s not just one-offs,” Vermes said. “That excites me. I’m excited about the plan. That’s the way my brain works. I don’t work well in one-offs. I’m always thinking later down the road.”