Shockwaves were sent through the Kansas City and American Soccer Universe on Monday morning as Sam McDowell broke the news no one expected we would ever hear:  Sporting Kansas City and Peter Vermes had parted ways.  It was an unceremonious end to an almost two decade run on the technical staff of the club that included 4 trophies, as well as his playing career in KC that included the MLS Cup/Supporters Shield double in 2000.  He will widely be remembered as a key component to the immense growth of soccer we’ve seen in Kansas City and the United States the last 30+ years, and his name will continue to hang proudly on the wall in Children’s Mercy Park.It was an unfortunate end to Peter’s time leading the club, but a necessary one for the team to start on a new journey towards meeting the high standards Peter created during his time here.  Regrettably the team had fallen from that caliber in recent years, and ownership agreed that it was time to make a change to attempt to start a process to recapture that level of success.Mike Illig met with a large cadre of local and national media at Compass Minerals National Performance Center to discuss the decision and the plans to move forward.  He spoke with a significant amount of candor regarding the amount of work ahead of him and the organization as they look to replace a head coach for literally the first time.  Peter’s fingerprints are on every inch of the facilities in which he worked, and it will take quite a bit of time to unravel the vast responsibilities he took on his shoulders and place them on both current and incoming personnel.

In the meantime, Kerry Zagavnin, Peter’s longtime assistant, and someone who has been at the club for even longer than Peter when you combine his playing and coaching career, will take the reins on the sidelines coaching the team.  Illig was very clear that Kerry had been promised this opportunity for some time, and that there was no other choice for who would step in as the interim manager while they both evaluate his performance as well as the potential candidate pool.  It will now be Kerry’s charge to build and implement a tactical plan to address the significant needs of this team on the field, both offensively and defensively, and we will try to dig into some ideas of what adjustments we think could be made to help improve the on-field success of the team and build meaningful progress.

And if you hadn’t forgotten, our rivals from across the state come into Kansas City this weekend to try to keep that winless streak going.  They are a staunchly defensive team that Zavagnin and the staff will have their work cut out for trying to break down and get a result against on Saturday.