Why David Lee left NYCFC for “something special” at Sporting KC | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

As he leaves New York City FC this week to become Sporting Kansas City’s new chief soccer officer, David Lee expects to field an inevitable question, particularly from proud inhabitants of “the greatest city on earth, the center of the universe,” as author Ellen R. Shapiro once described Gotham and its people.

Why abandon the Big Apple for the distant Great Plains? Particularly with NYCFC set to embark on another Audi MLS Cup Playoffs run, and just a matter of months away from the 2027 opening of Etihad Park, their luxurious, long-awaited permanent home in Queens.

“It's one of the most, if not the most exciting opportunity in all of MLS,” Lee told MLSsoccer.com in a one-on-one conversation about his move. “It is a historic franchise that's had huge amounts of success, has an amazing fan base, unbelievable owners that want to support and win. And I think there's something exciting about taking on a challenge where you get the opportunity to build something … to put my stamp on it.

“I just couldn't turn it down, because I really feel like there's something special in Kansas City.”

Art of the deal

One could categorize this as a lateral move, at least on paper: Moving from one MLS side's CSO post to another’s. Yet that would ignore the context that drew Lee to uproot his family of four and depart the organization he’s called home for a dozen years to join a Western Conference basement dweller suffering through one of their worst-ever campaigns.

Nor, he cautions, is this so simple as jumping from a ‘large market’ to ‘small market’ setting, with such labels failing to adequately describe the realities on the ground for his current and former employers.

“We've been a below-average discretionary-spend team on our three DPs, three U22s the entire tenure I've been here,” Lee said of NYCFC. “We've never entered the upper echelon of spending, whether that's decision budgets, whatever that might be … but overall, I think we've done a really, really nice job in building our roster using every roster mechanism we possibly can to try to fill out and build a squad as deep as what we have right now.

“I didn't ask about budget as part of this job process. That's not the most important thing to me,” he added of his conversations with SKC. “There is no correlation in MLS between the amount you spend and how successful you are. There just isn't. It's actually much more about using the dollars that you do get most effectively. Of course, if we can increase the dollar spend, you open the door to a potentially higher level of player, if your processes are right. But I'm going to be extremely focused on making sure that our process as an organization, and how we make decisions, are correct.”

Replacing a legend

Peter Vermes had been in charge of Sporting’s soccer operations for nearly two decades and was the longest-serving head coach in MLS when he and the club parted company at the end of March, with the Midwesterners wracked by a lengthy winless skid. In fact, they were still the Kansas City Wizards when Vermes first arrived, years away from a successful rebrand and construction of the modern soccer temple that is Children’s Mercy Park.

Thus do many around SKC view the hiring of Vermes’ successor as the club’s biggest decision of the past 20 years, with an accompanying overhaul of not only a roster that’s missed out on the playoffs in two of the last three seasons, but the entire sporting operations structure.

It all makes for a massive to-do list in both the short and long term.

“The fact that Peter was there for so long shows the owners’ commitment, loyalty,” said Lee. “I've been in one place for 12 years; it's quite unusual in football, and for me to go somewhere, that was probably also a really important thing, that the owners believed in me and wanted me and believed in my vision of what I think we can do to help turn this around and get Kansas City more competitive.”

He says it was SKC, not him, who made the initial contact about their vacancy. And Sporting Club, the ownership group led by Cliff Illig, underlined their faith in Lee by offering a rare seven-year contract through 2032 – even if he makes clear he’ll need to produce measurable improvements in a small fraction of that period.

“I've not pursued any other opportunities,” explained Lee, whose official title is president of soccer operations and general manager. “I was very happy in New York, and it took something really special from Sporting KC to make me reconsider. But it was very much the first time I got a phone call to say, you know, this might be there.

“There's a lot about how I make decisions and what I would want for my future that really aligned with how I view Sporting KC’s ownership from the outside; the fan base, the facilities – all the pieces that go into making a huge decision like this.”

Roster rebuild coming?

Lee emphasizes that he’s made no decisions about players or staff, and won’t until he’s spent significant time on the ground gathering information and getting to know his new workplace. But between now and opening day of 2026, the potential exists for a sweeping rebuild on par with an expansion launch.

It’s a process he’ll immerse himself in this winter, while his wife and two children will remain based in northern New Jersey to finish out their elder son’s senior year of high school.

“The results are not where we need them to be,” Lee said of SKC. “The underlying performances are not where we need them to be. And we know that there's 17 players that have option decisions or are out of contract at the end of this season.

“The potential to put my imprint on the squad in a relatively short period of time is another reason why I think it's a fantastic job, and why I'm so lucky to have it. Because normally in MLS, if you aren't having a great season, and you're locked into all your contracts for the next two or three years, that's a really hard problem to get out of in MLS. Getting out of contracts that you would like to is a challenge. So this is an opportunity where we don't have that problem."

Model of consistency

Lee was one of NYCFC’s very first employees, joining the club ahead of their 2015 expansion debut, and he patiently, methodically climbed the ranks, rising to technical director in 2017, then sporting director in 2019. Over the past 10 years, the Pigeons lead MLS in total regular-season points (523) and playoff appearances (nine). That perennial competitiveness, along with their capture of the 2021 MLS Cup, is a legacy he’s proud of as he exchanges one shade of light blue for another.

Though he stresses that he carries no preconceived notions to KC, he does note the value of City’s overarching adherence to a generally proactive, possession-oriented game model across a surprisingly high level of managerial turnover, with six permanent head coaches in that time who’ve tweaked the playing philosophy along the lines of their particular outlook.

“One of the reasons why New York City have been able to be so consistent over a long period – we'd like to have won more trophies, of course – but really consistent in MLS terms over the last 10 years is because we have, I would say, principles or models of our style of play,” said Lee. “That means that we can recruit players to it, that you don't have big turnover in the types of players that you need when there are inevitable transitions.

“That allows you to identify coaches, if you ever need a head coach, that align with how you are currently playing, align to identify players that fit more seamlessly into that model of play. But it is not going to be a strict prescriptive.”

Segments of NYCFC’s fan base have a more mixed view of his tenure, with particular scrutiny on the Pigeons’ mixed record with big-ticket signings, where letdowns like Jovan Mijatović and Alex Mitriță intermingle with success stories like Taty Castellanos and Santi Rodríguez. Lee notes that City’s membership in the City Football Group network offered both pros and cons, and is thrilled to be venturing into new territory.

“The reality is,” he said, “when you are part of a global organization, support has to go to potentially another club in the group. Maybe there's a need for something somewhere else, and maybe it can't come to New York right now, or you have to manage some of those sort of shared responsibilities or shared resources that come as being part of a group, that maybe you don't need when you can just make decisions about what is right for Sporting Kansas City.

“So it was certainly part of the decision-making process for me, the opportunity to come out on my own outside of CFG and implement all the things that I've been fortunate to learn over 12 years and take them into hopefully putting Kansas City back where it belongs.”