Dom Dwyer's Sporting KC contract extension may put him on track for USMNT

Dom Dwyer signed a contract extension with Sporting Kansas City on Wednesday, committing his future to the club that drafted him out of South Florida. As per usual, the club did not announce how long the contract ran, but they did say that it is a multi-year extension.

That raises a question: will it make him eligible to play for the United States?

Dwyer is from England and was linked to a move back to his home country throughout the year. His future wasn't tied to Sporting or MLS, even if he scored 24 goals on the campaign. That brought into question whether he would ever be able to play for the U.S.

Dwyer is not a U.S. citizen so he is currently ineligible to suit up for the Stars and Stripes. But he did receive a green card in his rookie season, 2012, and would be eligible to apply for citizenship in 2017. That is if he continued to live in the U.S. With a move to England possible, it wasn't assured that he would continue to live in the U.S., so citizenship wasn't necessarily going to be possible either.

Now he looks set to stay in the U.S. Odds are that his new deal with Sporting runs at least three years too, which means that barring a transfer, he will be able to apply for citizenship in 2017. Dwyer is now a legitimate U.S. propsect.

There are a lot of leaps being made here. Number one among them is that he continues to play well enough to be in the mix for the U.S. He had a great 2014 season, but he scored just three goals before that. It's not as if the 24-year-old will definitely be good enough for the U.S. in 2017, whether he's eligible or not.

The other leap is that he wants to play for the U.S. He's said before that his dream was to play for England, but that was also partly because he didn't think he'd have the chance to play for another country.

"I think if I were to get called in the future and have an opportunity, I think that's something every player would love to do and dream of," Dwyer told MLS Soccer when asked about playing for the U.S.

That would lead us to believe he would accept a call-up if he got one. So leap number two is less of a problem than leap number one.

In the meantime, Dwyer and the U.S. has three years to wait for citizenship, but now it at least looks like he'll be around and eligible come 2017. That's a step, and a major one, to adding another striker to the American player pool.