FC Kansas City has been quickly coming together on the player side. The Blues were fortunate when they received one of the best groups of allocated players from the U.S., Canadian and Mexican National Teams. They then feel like they stole the college draft when they were able to select 2 of their top 4 including the player they felt should have been the overall number 1.
While the player side seems to be shaping up very well, there is still a large amount to accomplish for the team and the league. Signing free agents is always fun for the fans and by all appearances FC Kansas City is doing well attracting players. Teams are only allowed to sign 4 free agents at the moment by the league and the Blues are linked to a pretty good group already.
Sinead Farrelly and Melissa Henderson tweeted to FC Kansas City draft picks about getting to play with them and Leigh Ann Robinson was being hosted a couple weeks ago at a Comets game and seemed ready to sign then. If these are three of the four free agents, then FC Kansas City has already done well with those signings.
With the seven allocated players, four draft picks and four free agents, FC Kansas City will have 15 of their max 20 players.
The next step after signing free agents is the supplemental draft which should take place around February 6th. Each team can select 10 free agents to submit to the draft and then the teams will select players. Teams can select players that other teams submitted to the draft as well as from their own list.
This should fill the bulk of the remaining open slots on FC Kansas City and other teams however the Blues will not stop looking at that point. They do plan to hold both open and invitational tryouts to fill any open roster spots and build a list of potential players to call up for injuries.
FC Kansas City expects to open camp somewhere around March 11th. One downside to having so many U.S. National team players on the roster is that the players still with the National Team will miss a week or two working with their new team mates while they are at the Algarve Cup. On a positive note, FC Kansas City’s top two picks in the draft, Kristie Mewis and Erika Tymrak both graduated early and can be in camp from the start if Mewis is not still with the U.S. Women.
Off the field
While the team is off to a good start with players, off the field there is still a lot of work to do. FC Kansas City is the only team that has not announced where they will be playing. The team is still working on finalizing stadium plans and has met multiple times this week with the most likely sites. It sounds like there are two main candidate sites left and both have good things to offer. The team needs to get that wrapped up before the league schedule can be made.
Not only do they need a stadium for the schedule but they need it in order to start selling tickets. There are several hundred deposits made but the team cannot turn them into sales until they can release a ticket package, and they cannot release ticket packages until the stadium is known.
Another item that FC Kansas City is working on is sponsors. A jersey sponsor and all the other various levels of sponsorship associated with a soccer team these days. They have had significant interest from well-known companies that would seem to be a good fit but it is just another detail in the long list that has to be worked out.
The season is expected to start around April 13th and the schedule should come out in early February.
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