KANSAS CITY, Mo. – For eight rounds of Wednesday’s Expansion Draft, it looked as if Sporting Kansas City would emerge without a losing a player.
But with only three picks remaining, the Vancouver Whitecaps plucked third-year professional Jonathan Leathers off Kansas City’s roster, adding the versatile defender to their growing squad and leaving manager Peter Vermes to look for a replacement this offseason.
“I thought there was a chance for a couple guys to go,” Vermes said in a phone interview Thursday morning. “Obviously, it’s always a risk on who you leave out there, but I hate to see [Leathers] go. I think he really has been coming into his own over the course of this year. He just was starting to get there and unfortunately that’s the way of expansion. You work with guys and then they have to move on.”
In three seasons in Kansas City, Leathers made 36 appearances and started 25 games, playing mostly right back but filling in centrally as well in 2010.
Vermes made the Furman graduate a second round pick in the 2008 SuperDraft and said the speedy defender had made significant strides forward this season, especially tactically, which had allowed him to fill in all over the back line.
With no other players taken by Vancouver or the Portland Timbers, Sporting hold onto the rights of Jimmy Conrad, Josh Wolf, Shavar Thomas and Eric Kronberg, among others.
Leathers faced an uphill battle to lock down a starting spot in 2011, and Vermes said he had confidence that the defender would compete for a place on the field immediately in Vancouver as the club prepared for its first season in MLS.
“I actually think he’s going to wind up being a starter for those guys,” Vermes said. “I really do. He is a solid, hardworking guy that you can have on the outside with a really good engine. I think he’s going to get a chance to play on a regular basis so I’m happy for him on that side, but I just hate to lose a guy that could have brought things to us over the course of this year.”
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