Two Sporting KC Rumors and Vermes Says it's Pulskamp's Job

For the Glory KC is back with the 116th episode of the show! 

Sporting Kansas City have not one, but two rumored signings coming to town. While it's two rumored players, they are both from the same team. The first one we learned about early last week appears to be the Designated Player #10 the team has been saying they are chasing. That's Manu Garcia (learn more about Manu here).

The second rumor is for right-winger Magomed-Shapi Suleymanov (more on Shapi here). Both players play for Aris in the Greek first division. The rumored combined fee, according to GiveMeSport's Tom Bogert comes in around €5 million.

We get into the details and stats for each player and try to decide if these feel like good signings. One notch in favor of Garcia, despite his lower numbers are those of another Spanish midfielder Mike Burns brought to MLS. Look at the stats both before and after arriving in MLS:

• La Liga: 74 GP, 3 G, 9A, 4,702 min
• LALiga2: 49 GP, 4G, 1A, 3,044 min
• Premier League: 28 GP, 2G, 2A, 1,799 min
• MLS: 157 GP, 39G, 45A, 13,402 minutes and an MLS MVP

That player? Carles Gil for the New England Revolution. He joined just a year younger at 26-years-old and went from relatively unimpressive numbers to being one of the best players in the league. There is no saying if Manu Garcia can do that, but Vermes and Burns surely have to hope so. It's worth noting that both Garcia and Suleymanov were held out of Aris' game this weekend. Teams don't do that for no reason, but it's always possible it still falls through.

Randomly snuck into the middle of this rumor conversation was a prior rumored signing, Unai Hernandez, who appears headed to Saudi Arabia for big money. We also found a way to work in Dom Dwyer leaving the Oakland Roots.

In addition to talking rumors, we have to mention the second straight preseason loss for Sporting KC, this time to Chicago. It's tough to take much from a game we didn't see, but there were some good quotes from Peter Vermes and Erik Thommy.

One of those quotes was Vermes confirming he's happy with John Pulskamp as the starting goalkeeper and he has no plans to add a veteran keeper. It'll be an extremely young GK room with Pulskamp (23), Ryan Schewe (22) and Jack Kortkamp (16 now, 17 on the 28th). Is that the right decision?

Finally, the KC Current and the entire NWSL have their schedule announced. They open the season (again) against the Portla