You never want to lose one of your best players midway through the season.
But when a Godfather offer slides across your desk — or, more accurately, pops up on your phone via WhatsApp — you can’t help but sign off on it. With a star player gone, how do teams scramble to restock the shelves with talent, even as the clock ticks towards the deadline?
That’s just one of the questions Backheeled posed to Real Salt Lake’s sporting director Kurt Schmid in an interview after his team’s wheeling and dealing in the summer transfer window.
Few MLS clubs were involved in more meaningful deals this summer than RSL, both in terms of volume and pure dollars.
Outside of Atlanta United and Thiago Almada, no MLS team had to move on from a player as impactful as winger Andres Gomez, who’s off to Ligue 1 for an eight-figure transfer fee. There’s that Godfather offer, one that came after the club's deal to sell Fidel Barajas to Chivas. In hopes of staying on a trophy pace, RSL added Designated Player attacking midfielder Diogo Goncalves and U22 Initiative winger Dominik Marczuk, among others.
Backheeled caught up with Schmid, the top-dog in Real Salt Lake’s front office, to learn more about building an MLS roster and what it’s like for chief soccer officers on deadline day.
Answers have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Joseph Lowery
What is life like for you in the last few days of the window? How much sleep are you getting?
Well, ideally the last few days of the window are super quiet because you've got everything done already. But that wasn't the case for us this window, just with all the moving parts with the Gomez transfer and bringing in Dominik Marczuk. I spent most of the last few days living my life on the Polish time zone, so that was probably not ideal for me from a sleep standpoint. But I just wanted to make sure that we got the deal done.
It was a little touch-and-go with his team playing in the second leg of a European qualifier the day before the window closed. It was hard, but that's part of the job.
You told MLSsoccer.com that “an eight-figure offer doesn’t come around often.” How do you set the valuation on a player like Andres Gomez to know when to sell?
You have to look at comps. Comps from MLS are important. You can look at comps throughout the world and what those leagues that you're talking to end up buying for. That helps set the valuation. But you also have to look at comps coming out of MLS and what those players have done before they came and why they are what they are and why they were worth what they were worth.
It's not an exact science. And at the end of the day something is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. But we know that it needed to be a good offer for us to do anything in the summer.
You can always say, “oh, yeah, we wish we got more.” But it was a good price and it was a good opportunity for Andres. From his standpoint, it's the right platform for him, the right level to go to and hopefully propel himself.
