Drew has only partially thawed out from a bone chilling evening at Children’s Mercy Park that saw Sporting Kansas City finally play a game of meaning, unfortunately losing 1-0 to Lionel Messi and Friends in the first leg of their Concacaf Champions Cup tie.  This game couldn’t have come at a better time for us as it has been what has seemed like an interminable offseason causing us to spend way too much time parsing information and we finally have a game to see and evaluate and assess.There were a number of surprises in the lineup for this match, some due to fitness issues and others due to players playing in positions we did not expect.  And while the result wasn’t ideal, there was a surprising amount of pragmatism, realism, and optimism regarding the performance especially from a defensive perspective against a very talented attacking opponent.Tactical Corner this week will focus on that defensive shape, that while not necessarily earth shattering, inventive or new, showed a remarkable amount of organization given how few of the personnel meant to accomplish it were new to the team, and spoke to many of the references Peter Vermes made towards “mentality” last year which could easily be read as effort to execute effectively.

Finally, we will cover a couple news items around the team before doing a quick preview of the team’s season opener in Austin this weekend.

Manu Garcia arrived in KC just in time to be greeted by a snowstorm and his new teammates returning from preseason. We take a look at some much too soon predictions for the team filled with a bunch of partial information from preseason scrimmages and lineups.

Peter Vermes made the rounds on radio shows this week giving some insight into some of the offseason transactions and the things he is looking for from the team. It is always good to have a listen to what he has to say as he is often more forthcoming in these interviews than he is during normal press availability.

We spend some time overreacting to everything that happened this off-season, given that said off-season is almost over, hopefully it gets it out of our requisite systems so we can get ready for an actual game of meaning Tuesday evening vs Inter Miami.

Finally, a quick discussion about both Claire Hutton and Michelle Cooper getting calls up to the USWNT for the SheBelieves Cup, as well as the Soap Opera saga involving Lucho Acosta and Evander, as both find new homes and Portland gets money to re-invest in a new DP#10.

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We have spent the last two weeks anxiously twiddling our thumbs waiting for the official announcement of two transfers from Greece, and little did we know that another transaction was brewing that was going to subvert them both from right here in MLS.  Sporting Kansas City became the very first club to use the league’s new cash for trades system, acquiring Center Forward Dejan Joveljic from the LA Galaxy for $4M and signing him to a new Designated Player contract that will keep him in Kansas City for at least the next 3 years.  This move came as somewhat of a shock to SKC fans as it went from a somewhat throwaway comment by Tom Bogert on Thursday’s Soccerwise episode to a done deal Saturday evening.  There is a lot to like about Joveljic and the concept of SKC locking up a DP#9 for the foreseeable future, but it does raise questions about William Agada’s standing with the team and his future in KC.

We did get more good news just 36 hours later as the reported transfers of Manu Garcia and Shapi Suleymanov from Aris Thessaloniki in Greece were officially announced on Monday morning.  Sporting KC has now both a DP 9&10 signed, laying out reportedly around $9M to do so, as well as adding more attacking depth with Suleymanov.  While there is still opportunity to improve the roster further, and some reasonable questions as to how quickly these changes will yield positive results, it is certainly safe to say that SKC is making moves to try to move forward from a fairly dour 2024 season.

With the addition of Garcia, we can finally start to look at how the midfield may operate in 2025 including the depth chart and likely roles within the tactical structure.  Midfield control was area of significant concern in 2024, and while the addition of Garcia will certainly help raise the level of the midfield in general, there is still some discussion about how to employ these players effectively to both enable positive chance creation while eliminating opponents’ opportunities for attacking transition events.  We’ll discuss what we expect this midfield to look like and how Peter Vermes and Co may go about addressing what should be a significant area of focus this season.

Finally, we will take a quick look at my favorite MLS release of the year, the updated roster rules.  Now, I promise not to spend 20 minutes talking about how to manipulate the rules to maximize the amount of GAM you can receive or what this new 31st slot on the roster means.  But we will cover a couple items of note that are of consequence to Sporting KC.

The combo meal of transfers appears to have developed in Thessaloniki as Sporting KC work to close the transfer of Spanish Attacking Midfielder Manu Garcia and appear to be close to acquiring his Aris teammate Right Winger Shapi Suleymanov as well.  We have a few reported details on the structure of this deal and why it’s happening in this manner, even if it caused one member of this podcast to get pre-emptively grumpy about what could appear to be a bulk discount strategy for player acquisition by the front office.

But, this wasn’t the only new player connected with Sporting Kansas City this week, as they have also reportedly put in a bid on 21 yo CB Bryan Okoh, currently with RB Salzburg.  Okoh has candidly not played a lot of soccer over the past couple seasons, and when he has, it has mostly been in the Austrian 2nd Division, not with the Salzburg first team. So this is another somewhat underwhelming player in profile based on what we can glean from the internet.  Obviously, those searches have limits, but it is hard to think this is a signing that could immediately come in and significantly improve the quality of SKC’s back line.

Sporting KC has wrapped up their Florida leg of preseason and is en route back to KC as we record this podcast before heading out to California for phase 2 of the preseason and the Coachella Valley Invitational this upcoming weekend.  They are unfortunately coming back with no wins across their 3 scrimmages, but did finally get on the score sheet today against Charlotte.  Perhaps the most notable information gleaned from these games came in the post game press conferences where we learned that it is unlikely any personnel are going to be added to the goalkeeping room, that a couple of the non-contract players in camp appear to have impressed, and that while not official yet, the process for acquiring players is progressing in a positive manner.

Finally we will discuss MLS releasing the details of what teams are participating in what non-league tournaments, including SKC’s potentially very limited non-league schedule, as well as talk about player enablement within a tactical structure in tactical corner.

Finally, after almost a year of saying it was the position of highest priority, Sporting KC have been reportedly in negotiations with a DP #10 target, Manu Garcia of the Greek Super League club Aris.  SKC fans have to feel like the old lady titanic gif that says “It’s been 84 years…” upon hearing this report.  There is obviously work yet to be done to get this deal completed, but it is finally a clear sign of intent from a club that has until now, only been capable of relaying promises without results.

It did not take long for the takes to come pouring in about Mr Garcia, from parsing his injury history, to tearing apart his goal-scoring stats, to asking “Who the hell is Aris Thessaonliki” to salivating over some absolutely absurd passes in his YouTube highlight videos.  Thankfully I am a certified sicko and fired up Wyscout to look at some of his event comps and hopefully can provide a bit more detail on the player and what his potential might look like.SKC also played a game(sort of) against FIU last Saturday.  These scrimmages rarely tell you much and this one even less so given 5 players were held out for precaution and they could only play a 60 minute game because SKC had so few players available to participate.  That did not stop too many people from trying to parse any useful information from the game that we literally have no actual information on than 8 tweets and a post game press conference.  Honestly the post game presser was more useful for gleaning gems about playing style, Mason Toye’s attributes and how the team looks to use them, and Mr Burns’ trip “overseas” that we have since learned likely included a stop in Greece to work on the Garcia deal which is still pending.

We teased it last week, but we are going to do a bit of a tactical refresher on the tactical setup we think is most likely to be deployed by Vermes this year.  He has been giving us tidbits during his media availability and the players have as well that should help clarify expectations, and it has been a minute since we dusted off the positional play handbook as well as the possession structures and counter-pressing shapes and pressure triggers that we expect to see and what that means for maximizing the personnel the team has available to it.  So, this is as good of a time as any to review and refine our perspectives on that philosophy.

Finally, we’ll do a quick review of analytics perspectives on the heels of Matt Pfeffer joining the ASA pod this week, discuss Diego Luna’s breakthrough with the USMNT, and take a look ahead at the upcoming week as the European transfer window comes to a close and transactions being worked on there start to accelerate.

Peter Vermes and Mike Burns convened for their first press conference of the year and it was rife with news and details about a number of changes we’ve been discussing over the past several weeks, as well as some new information that we had not yet heard from the club.  We learned the details of the Pulido transfer to Chivas, a new signing at center forward to spell William Agada now that Pulido is gone, and the revelation that anyone that becomes the team’s captain this season needs to have the cajones to take it.  There was also some discussion around tactics, and hearing Vermes echo the sentiment of this podcast at least once or twice about areas the team needs to improve.  

Mike Burns did discuss that the Pulido transfer has accelerated their planning regarding the timeframe to execute on this project, and merely days later MLS announced some significant changes to some of the roster building mechanisms that he will need to utilize to accomplish those goals.  The internal transfer system was implemented, GAM became perpetual, and there were some other changes to create more flexibility in how a team looks to build its roster, which was a word that was echoed by Burns several times on Friday.

Finally, we will discuss what our expectations are for this rebuild project and how it might correlate to other clubs we’ve seen accomplish the same of late, as well as cover some of the frenzy of hot stove news around the league with numerous teams making moves at a pace that means Tom Bogert is probably killing his phone battery 3 times a day, as well as check in on the club in Miami as they get preseason started.

Out of seemingly nowhere, Alan Pulido completed his oft rumored, but rarely taken serious return to Chivas de Guadalajara, the club from which Sporting KC acquired him back in 2020, and seemingly couldn’t go a single offseason without being linked back to.  We considered this to be a contract that Sporting KC would not be able to reasonably get out of, and had resigned ourselves to the fact that his presence would be a significant portion of the rebuild planning Mike Burns and Peter Vermes are attempting to architect.  How little did we know?

Transferring Pulido to Guadalajara is the most recent in a variety of offseason moves that have created tons of flexibility in how the SKC front office wants to approach rebuilding the roster.  The problem is, that requires acquiring players to fill those roster slots, and as of the recording of this podcast, the only players that have come into the team are literally in high school.  This has led to some consternation amongst the fanbase as to what to expect from a team currently only has 19 rostered players, most of which are of the role-playing variety.  We’ll get into whether it’s time to panic, and what to reasonably expect from this team this season.

Finally, we discuss the departure of a staple on the SKC coaching staff, the holiday season ritual of Adidas kit leaks and SKC’s in particular, as well as a quick update on the goings on with the KC Current offseason.

Cody got knocked out by some kind of virus that destroyed his vocal cords, so I was able to scour the transfer market for a short term loan from Daniel Sperry with the KC Star to join the pod this week.

The MLS and Concacaf Champions Cup schedules have been released, and a certain Argentinian World Cup winner is returning to Kansas City, this time to the friendly confines of Children’s Mercy Park.  MLS did make some needed adjustments to their TV schedule meaning we do have a couple Sunday evening games in KC this year as well as what looks like a brutal run through the month of May.

It is the offseason, so Tactical Corner gets replaced with Roster Corner as we look at the moves SKC is making to attempt to reinforce and rebuild a roster that will have a fair amount of turnover.  There were some new Homegrown signings, an expansion draft, the Superdraft that was decidedly less super in coverage this year, as well as an actual rumor worth discussing coming out of Brazil for a young Argentinian winger.

Finally - The Current sign some goalkeepers, National sports media gets a whiff of MLS Cup ratings, and MLS keeps dropping transparency bombs out of nowhere and tells us exactly how much Allocation Money every team is starting the season with.

It is officially the “Hot Stove” portion of the year and the rumors and announcements are starting to pour in around MLS and Sporting KC has even been mentioned in one or two.  With most of the teams in MLS having publicly announced their roster decisions we have the opportunity to look with in the league and see if there are any players standing out that SKC may potentially want to look at to solidify a few areas of need within the roster.  As usual, I have gone deep down a rabbit hole of identifying every available player, their age, position, most recent compensation and the league mechanism they’d have to go through to come up with a couple interesting ideas of areas the team might be able to focus.

There was quite a fervent discussion on the H&A discord last week regarding the goalkeeper situation and how SKC might look to fill that spot on the roster.  I think we can provide some context around what is most likely as well as what makes sense based on the decisions and communications made to date by the team.

We also have an Expansion draft coming up for the new San Diego Franchise which means it’s time to discuss who can/should be on SKC’s protection list.  Mike Kuhn did a lot of the legwork for us on this already to help break down where the margins are and we’ll have a quick discussion on what we expect to happen.

Finally - there were a number of coaching changes that happened since we recorded last, the Concacaf Champions Cup draw is coming, PRO Referees continue to be messy, and there’s a little matter of an MLS Cup Final this weekend to discuss.

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Sporting KC announced their long awaited roster decisions last week, moving on from 8 of the 16 players eligible for an exit at the end of this season.  This created quite a stir as a couple of the players leaving have legitimate shouts to be SKC Legends one day.  It is never easy to make changes like this but it is the type of change both of the proprietors of this podcast have asked for as well as fanbase at large.  

Mike Burns met with the media last Friday to discuss these changes, plans for the future, and how he is looking at building the roster this off-season.  It was a surprisingly candid press conference, with relative openness to discuss how he means to go about replacing key players on the roster in much greater detail than we have become accustomed to.  It also showed an understanding of key areas of need in the Sporting Department in order for the front office to function effectively in the current version of MLS.

The USMNT took care of business against Jamaica in a 5-2 aggregate win moving them onto the CONCACAF Nations League final stage.  The away leg in Jamaica was predictably cagey, much to do with the pitch conditions and hostile environment.  The return leg in St Louis got going with a bang early, and showed some new sophistication in how this team attacks opponents that should it continue could certainly help raise the ceiling of its performances in the future.

Finally, we have to discuss the Current exiting the NWSL playoffs in rather frustrating fashion, as well as cover a few topics around MLS including the upcoming 2nd round of the playoffs that seem like we’ve been waiting a month for.

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