Kei Kamara is headed back to Sporting Kansas City, after English side Norwich City FC elected not to exercise the buy option on his loan.
Whether the winger might be headed abroad again, either in the summer transfer window or after the 2013 MLS season, remains to be seen.
The Premiership club announced its decision on Saturday afternoon via Twitter and confirmed it with a release on the club website.
Another tweet thanked the Sierra Leone Star for his time with the Canaries: “The Club would like to place on record its thanks to @KeiKamara and wish him the very best for the future.”
Not long after that, Sporting president Robb Heineman tweeted:
Kamara, Sporting's leading scorer over the past three seasons, had been on loan since January. He featured in 11 matches for Norwich, scoring once, with his last appearance coming as a 70th-minute substitute in Saturday's 2-1 loss to Aston Villa.
On Friday, during the club's weekly news conference, Sporting manager Peter Vermes said Norwich's decision was “nothing we can talk about at the moment.” He did say, though, that Kansas City would be weighing other offers from abroad if Norwich decided not to exercise its option.
“There are other teams out there that have contacted the league and are interested,” Vermes said. “So I think what will happen is that we'll be dealing with those situations. But in the meantime, that then becomes a discussion with Kei and what he wants to do. And then the other piece of it is whether or not the offers are worthwhile for us as well. But in the meantime, he's back playing with us, which was always the plan from the beginning.”
Steve Brisendine covers Sporting Kansas City for MLSsoccer.com.
