(I would like to say from the outset that in writing this piece, it was awfully hard not feel like Scrooge McDuck diving into his piles of gold doubloons.)

Now that the dust has long since settled on the transfer of Krisztian Nemeth from Sporting Kansas City to al-Gharafa in Qatar, it is worth a discussion to explore some of the possible uses of the estimated $2 million in general allocation money Nemeth’s transfer fetched for Sporting KC’s kitty (the reports were that the transfer price was over $3 million, but Major League Soccer keeps one-third of all transfer fees of non-homegrown players).

[Editor: It was pointed out rightly that Sporting only get $650,000 in general allocation money from the Nemeth deal, as that is the max (the rest is held in a fund by the league for stadium improvements, DPs, etc). However, there is likely other monies still out there from the other deals that have been struck as well. It’s impossible to know exactly with the lack of transparency in MLS.]

Nemeth represents the third big-money transfer Sporting KC have executed in the past four years, following Kei Kamara’s transfer to Middleborough in 2013 and Oriol “Uri” Rosell’s sale to Sporting Lisbon in 2014.

Kamara’s transfer is likely the more instructive one for our purposes, as he is a similar player in role (a striker turned winger by Vermes) and at 29, was only two years older at the time of transfer to Boro as Nemeth is now, even though, as we’ll soon see, Uri’s transfer fee was a bit higher.

The 900,000-pound transfer fee fetched for Kamara’s services translates to roughly $1.37 million (in 2013 dollars), meaning that Sporting received approximately $910,000 in general allocation money for Kei after MLS took its cut.

Rosell’s transfer fee was just north of $1.5 million–even though defensive midfielder is a less monetarily valuable position, Uri’s youth meant that he still had (has) tremendous upside. By 2013, Kamara was what he was, and considering the shelf life of forwards, it was not unreasonable to think that he had already peaked (of course, his stellar 2015 season with the Crew demonstrated that he has aged just fine for a striker, thank you very much).

Nemeth’s ~$3.1M fee, then, blew both Kamra’s and Rosell’s fees out of the water–it is more than both of theirs combined, in fact. This likely has to do at least as much with the gobs of petrodollars the Qatari League finds itself awash in–and thus allowing its clubs to overpay for talent–as much as Nemeth’s own market value, currently pegged by Transfermarkt at 1.05 million pounds, or approximately $1.5M.

In other words: Al-Gharafa dramatically overpaid for Nemo, and while as a fan, that transfer was hard for me to swallow, as an impartial writer (or, at least, as impartial as a fan can be), this means that Vermes pretty much *had* to sell Nemeth.

One of the core maxims of sound club management is that if another club comes in and offers you a ridiculous sum of money for a player, you always accept. Theoretically, even Lionel Messi should not be considered untouchable if another club (besides maybe Real Madrid) offered Barcelona $258 million (double his current estimated market value) for him.

In terms of managerial style (as opposed to the playing style of his club), Vermes has always struck me as an American version of Arsenal’s Arsene Wenger. Wenger was famously described as someone who “runs his club as though he is going to run it for a hundred years.”

Vermes has been willing to make whatever deals and sacrifices were necessary to strengthen the core future of the club, whether it was jettisoning starting center back and fan favorite Nick Garcia for the number one overall SuperDraft pick that netted Chance Myers, or in playing the expansion Montreal Impact side like a harp in the expansion draft by protecting the player they wanted–aging skipper Davy Arnaud–and getting them to send some general allocation money with Seth Sinovic back in exchange for Arnaud’s services.

Which returns me to the original question at hand, and which gives this piece its title: what is Sporting’s current glut of general allocation money good for? Because by all accounts, they are sitting on a pile of it that Scrooge McDuck would envy. While some of the Kamara and Rosell fees undoubtedly went to paying down the salaries of players like Roger Espinoza (which is why Espinoza is not counted as Designated Player despite having a DP-level $750,000 base salary), notably, Sporting has not made a huge splash in the transfer market, at least as far as fees are concerned.

Brad Davis was procured in exchange for draft picks, Nuno Andre Coelho was signed off the scrap heap after suffering repeated injuries, and Jordi Quintilla and Soni Mustivar both joined the club on free transfers as well.

Here are three possibilities for excellent uses of some of that general allocation money.