It felt like Groundhog Day in Children’s Mercy Park on Saturday night as Sporting Kansas City scored first, and held a lead into stoppage time only to give up a late equalizer on a somewhat unfortunate, yet somewhat self inflicted series of events,  and this increased their tally of dropped points from winning positions to 14 on the season.

In fairness, Sporting KC was pretty lucky to have that lead, after a pretty wild own goal equalizer and then a bit of brilliance from Andreu Fontas and Erik Thommy to go ahead in a match they were otherwise struggling to create a meaningful imprint on.

It was a very physical match, which certainly dominated the discourse both locally and nationally after the game, with SKC fans bemoaning the referee for not making foul calls and most of the national media wondering how SKC had become this soft.  we’ve been saying this for years

From a good news perspective, at least the coach isn’t worried about it.

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72 thousand plus midwestern soccer fans descended on Arrowhead Stadium Saturday to see Sporting KC take on Leo Messi and Inter Miami and were treated to several golazos on both sides of the ball and an unfortunate 3-2 loss for the good guys in blue.  The environment was honestly pretty cool, and it did give a glimpse of what professional soccer could look like in this region, but it also highlighted the length of the road to get there and how much of it we have left to traverse.

Sporting once again scored first in the match but were also once again unable to maintain that lead and they have now have one win from 5 home matches this season, a troubling statistic for an MLS team and leaving them with an uphill battle after this weekend with 4 of their next 5 games coming on the road.

We will cover some rule changes and the Open Cup draw in potpourri, as well as do a preview of this weekend’s derby against the pink scum to the east.

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Sporting KC seems to be hell bent on shipping 3 goals in the 2nd half of home games, as they did it again on Sunday afternoon, turning a first half that had fans feeling great about the team’s prospects into a horror movie.  This team continues to have a bipolar nature to their play that is creating significant frustration for both the fan base and its coach, who blamed the 2nd half performance on “poor management”, which was an interesting choice of words.

There were obviously some bright spots, and we will be sure to address them as well as identify when the tides began to shift and the insufficient nature in which the team and manager adapted to the situation which led to the collapse.

The MLS Board of Governors met this week and Paul Tenorio of the Athletic has details on some roster changes coming for this summer.  They are definitely incremental changes, but do allow for more flexibility in how teams architect rosters, and we’’ll spend a bit of time discussing what these changes mean for the league at large and for Sporting KC in particular.

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Sporting Kansas City traveled to the great white north and came away with a 3-1 victory in Toronto thanks to a couple bombazos from Remi Walter and Jake Davis, with a cherry on top of the sundae resulting from a very fun and dynamic play by Alenis Vargas. 

We spent a lot of time bemoaning useful depth on the pod last week, and with several starters unavailable it was reasonable to expect that things would be fairly difficult for Sporting in this match.  Instead, we found several solid, useful performances from roster spots we do not normally see, and definitely did not last year when similar injury woes hit them.

The KC Current have started the season perfect and there is a lot to be excited about with this team.  They’ve made several fun additions, and it appears they have a clear identity that while well coached, also seems to be fairly uncomplicated which perhaps is a good thing for this team given the talent level of its players.

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It was a tale of two halves last Saturday night in Kansas City as Sporting KC controlled the proceedings through the first 45 minutes of the match entering the locker room with a well deserved 2-0 lead.  Unfortunately a 10 minute sequence in the 2nd half quickly erased that advantage and left the team chasing a result with limited options available on the bench to help them do so.

Useful depth is another oft-covered topic on this podcast, and it reared it’s head again in the late minutes Saturday night.  We will do our best to avoid hyperbole, but there are legitimate concerns fans should have about the ceiling of this team given its limitations that are defined by multiple influencing factors that we will attempt to discuss this week.

There were many things to be encouraged about in this match outside the result though and one of them was an altered formation, which means we are 90 minutes into my prediction of over 500 minutes of Alan Pulido and Willy Agada on the pitch together.  I think we can all agree this setup was successful in many ways and is likely to be utilized more given the chance creation it helped induce.

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As the estimable Sam McDowell noted after the end of Sporting KC’s 2-1 victory over San Jose last Saturday night, the team went from winless to undefeated in an instant!

It was an improved performance in many areas, while certainly leaving continued room for additional improvements in future games.  The team was much more selective about the shots they took, and Dany Rosero scored on a set piece in a manner we’ve bemoaned has not been employed regularly enough in previous games.

There were a number of players we don’t get to see a lot of that played significant time in this match.  Granted they were all due to injury, it was a good chance to see how they took advantage of this opportunity and by in large they were mostly good.

Finally - in Potpourri we take a look back at a wild match to open CPKC stadium and the NWSL regular season on Saturday, preview the USMNT’s Nations League semifinal vs Jamaica, and take a quick look at the Olympic draw.

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Sporting Kansas City got its 3rd draw in a row to start the season after an entertaining 0-0 final in Los Angeles where the score line did not accurately tell the story as to how the match was played.  It was a very up and down affair as often happens when these clubs meet, and likely was a fun one for neutrals to watch.

That said, Sporting KC’s performance produced a familiar refrain from previous matches:  The ball progression was good, and often beautiful to watch, but too often the quality of shots created were either at too long of a distance or with too many opponents in between the shooter and the goal.  This led to a fairly low xG output for the 3rd straight game even if some of those shots were of better quality than could typically be expected.

Memo Rodriguez made his debut in place of Remi Walter who appears to still be recovering from the hard tackle he took against Philly.  Opinions were mixed on his performance, but I think he showed the quality that we’ve been yearning for from deeper positions on the roster and we’ll look a bit further into how he fits with the team and what talents he can bring to the table.

Finally - in Potpourri we have updates on both US National Teams, as well as the KC Current christening their new stadium this weekend.

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Sporting Kansas City opened up Children’s Mercy Park for the season with what has to feel like a heartbreaking draw at the hands of the Philadelphia Union, giving up the equalizing goal in the 5th minute of stoppage time after some dubious refereeing led to a late corner kick for Philly that they eventually converted. 

This of course meant that the replacement referees were a significant topic in the discourse following the match, as it was a fairly blatant error that allowed the sequence.

It was an improved performance over the Houston match, for sure, but Sporting is still struggling to create enough meaningful shots on goal to eliminate the opportunity for a referee error to have a significant impact on its results.

Alan Pulido has had a less than impactful start to the season on the stat sheet, but are his performances as bad as they seem?  We take this opportunity to analyze the numbers and see if there is any reason for hope that he is on the brink of rattling off goals like he did for most of the middle of 2023.

Finally - we dig into a number of Potpourri topics of discussion surrounding the KC soccer scene this week before a quick preview of the match at LAFC where it will not likely be snowing, which appears to be a significant competitive advantage for their opponents.

Sporting KC kicked off the 2024 MLS Season with what could be called a less than crisp performance down in Houston but came away with a road draw that looks just fine in the results column. While fair to have some frustration with the level of quality the team played with compared to their opponent, the defense was (mostly)solid, and there were inklings of progressive ideas that just didn't quite come off during the match.

SKC used their media day on Tuesday this week to launch a number of stadium upgrades just in time for this week's home opener. We discuss the various ways the club is trying to improve game day experience and whether they will have the impact fans are after.

The KC Current appear to using up any goodwill they have accrued over the past couple years and this comes as no surprise to at least one of this podcast duo.

Finally a quick preview of the home opener against the Philadelphia Union.

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We are back after two weeks off, and it seems all that has happened is people got more mad at MLS over its reticence to prop up the Open Cup and the referee lockout. We discuss how important these issues really are to anyone than other than the most plugged in fan and whether parsing them to the nth degree is valuable in any way.

The SKC roster situation is fairly boring. All of the roster additions were in what could be considered bench positions and it appears the open Designated Player slot will stay that way for a bit. There is reason for some level of malaise regarding the beginning of a season where not much new is happening with the team, but there are rational reasons for it and it may not be the worst thing to hold form for a couple months, even if fans don't want to hear it.

A discussion around whether Peter Vermes is evolving, or evolving at the rate that we think is necessary. We agree that he is willing to admit areas of opportunity and address them, but is he too reactive? Also, does he have too much on his plate? Is the team effectively using analytics and modern scouting techniques? There are a number of areas that seem from the outside to be less than optimized and could use further investment.

Finally a quick discussion on the tactical update with the USWNT and a preview of the season opener vs. Houston.

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