Sporting KC finally returned to the friendly confines of Children’s Mercy Park on Saturday Night, but were unable to give the fans a victory as they fell to FC Dallas 4-2. SKC was able to take the early lead again in this one off of a pretty curling shot from the top of the box by Shapi Suleymanov, but in a familiar refrain the team was unable to maintain their defensive posture in central midfield, and FC Dallas used it to pull them out of shape prior to a nice crossed ball from Shaq Moore onto...
Jun 18, 2025•1 hr 31 min•Season 4Ep. 143
Sporting KC traveled to LA this weekend a bit short handed due to a rapidly increasing injury list and it looked like it as LAFC were the far better side on the night and came away as 3-1 victors in what could almost be described as a tune up match for them before they begin their club world cup campaign in a few days. There was a moment of brilliance for Sporting as they scored a very beautiful goal that was very much against the run of play to take a 1-0 lead late in the first half. It was unf...
Jun 12, 2025•1 hr 59 min•Season 4Ep. 145
Sporting Kansas City were able to come away with all 3 points after another come from behind performance this time in Houston, on the heels of a Dejan Joveljic brace and Santi Munoz’ first goal in Sporting Blue. Houston piled on quite a bit of pressure in this one, but SKC were able to survive the onslaught and come away with a 3-1 victory. There were a number of positive performances, including Goalkeeper John Pulskamp continuing to improve and play with confidence, Jacob Bartlett having one of...
Jun 05, 2025•2 hr 29 min•Season 4Ep. 141
It was a tale of two halves at Children’s Mercy Park on Saturday Night as Sporting Kansas City came out fairly flat in the first half of their game against New England. Showing very little of the defensive organization that kept San Diego at bay the weekend prior. New England repeatedly exposed space on SKC’s right flank and scored two goals in the first half. Thankfully the response was incoming as interim coach Kerry Zavagnin made 3 changes at halftime that immediately breathed life into the s...
May 29, 2025•1 hr 38 min•Season 4Ep. 140
MLS Rivalry week for some reason coincided with the first mid-week match day of the year and Sporting KC got the very short end of that stick having to travel to St Louis and San Diego after having just been in Portland the weekend prior, but were able to come away with two road draws after a comeback performance in St Louis, and a very pragmatic defensive-oriented 0-0 draw in San Diego. While the defense continues to gel and the performances of the center back pairing and goalkeeper John Pulska...
May 22, 2025•1 hr 41 min•Season 4Ep. 139
This is a quick one before the STL match on Wednesday. Drew and Cody give their thoughts on the performance in Portland on Saturday before previewing the derby against St Louis. Some things have improved, but others still need work. Music by The Spin Wires
May 14, 2025•53 min•Season 4Ep. 138
Apparently the force was with Sporting Kansas City on Star Wars Day on Sunday as they needed to make some history to come home away with the 1-0 victory vs the Galaxy, doing so without registering a single shot in the game. While it wasn’t necessarily the kind of historical moment SKC fans were hoping to be attached to, 3pts is 3pts, and it took a very organized professional performance defensively to accomplish, led by both centerbacks Jansen Miller and Robi Voloder, as well as goalkeeper John ...
May 08, 2025•1 hr 42 min•Season 4Ep. 137
Sporting KC traveled to TQL stadium on Saturday and unfortunately were unable to come away with a result as Kevin Denkey scored two goals, one being an immediate goal of the year candidate meaning Zorhan Bassong’s first professional goal went wanting and Sporting KC took a 2-1 defeat. Kerry Zavagnin made some interesting tactical choices in this game, leaving FCC to attempt to dictate play much of the first half and limiting space for them to play into, before opening the game up a bit after hal...
May 01, 2025•1 hr 32 min•Season 4Ep. 136
MLS After Dark was in full form late Saturday night and Sporting Kansas City was a prime protagonist as they won a wild 5-3 game in San Jose bouncing back from a frustrating defeat the prior weekend at home vs. Portland. Daniel Salloi earned MLS Player of the Matchday honors bagging 2 goals and 2 assists and narrowly missing his first career professional hat trick. It was yet another game under the direction of interim coach Kerry Zavagnin where we saw Sporting KC be more dynamic and effective i...
Apr 24, 2025•1 hr 52 min•Season 4Ep. 135
A frustrating Sunday afternoon in Children’s Mercy Park saw Sporting Kansas City fall to the Portland Timbers 4-2 in a match that was plagued by all too familiar defensive mistakes and lapses in concentration. Interim head coach Kerry Zavagnin tried to warn us in his press availability earlier in the week that this team would still lose games at times and while there was certainly continued progress in chance creation offensively, some familiar problems defending restarts came back to bite them ...
Apr 17, 2025•1 hr 46 min•Season 4Ep. 134
A collective euphoric release of literal months of pent up energy was finally able to be expelled at Children’s Mercy Park on Saturday night as Dejan Joveljic slotted home two goals in the 2nd half of what had otherwise been a pretty cagey derby match with Pink Dog Food SC, meaning the good guys came away with a much needed 2-0 victory, and Kerry Zavagnin got an undefeated start to his time on the SKC sideline as interim head coach. It was a match that did feel different in the stadium, both in ...
Apr 10, 2025•1 hr 33 min•Season 4Ep. 133
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 ...
Apr 03, 2025•1 hr 45 min•Season 4Ep. 132
Sporting Kansas City returned to their losing ways on Saturday night in a staid, depressing, and rather familiar feeling performance losing 2-0 to LAFC. LAFC was the 2nd in a row of very solid defensive opponents that do not care that much about possession and unlike Minnesota last week, did not relax once up 2-0 and gave SKC no opportunities of consequence to attack, and SKC was certainly not up to the task of creating said opportunities on their own. Peter Vermes lamented this fact after the g...
Mar 27, 2025•1 hr 33 min•Season 4Ep. 131
Sporting Kansas City has officially ended their losing streak, and not in the manner anyone would have expected both in how the game unfolded, nor the final score line. The first Orange Ball game in Children’s Mercy Park history led to a wild comeback in the 2nd half, with Sporting scoring 3 goals in a 12 minute span before eventually coming away with a 3-3 draw against Minnesota United. Now, a draw does mean that the team still has not won a game since the middle of September last year, but we ...
Mar 21, 2025•1 hr 38 min•Season 4Ep. 130
Sporting Kansas City has now extended their losing streak to 10 straight games in all competitions stretching back to last year as they lost 2-1 to DC last Saturday night. If that sounds like a familiar introduction to you, I only had to make 2 changes to the text from last week’s intro to achieve it. The opponent, and increasing the losing streak total by 1. To say that things have gotten pretty rotten in the state of Missouri(and/or Kansas) would be putting it pretty mildly. There were some ta...
Mar 13, 2025•1 hr 45 min•Season 4Ep. 129
Sporting Kansas City has now extended their losing streak to 9 straight games in all competitions stretching back to last year as they were unable to find a goal while up a man for over 40 minutes against San Jose in Children’s Mercy Park last Saturday night, in front of the first home opener non-sell out in the venue’s history. There are a lot of (candidly)reasonable opinions asking for patience with this team due to the circumstances it is in through the 4 games played this year, but given the...
Mar 06, 2025•1 hr 28 min•Season 4Ep. 128
We’ve gone from waiting months on end to have a game to watch and analyze to having two in one week! Really three if you want to get technical, but 2 since the last time Cody and I got together to grace your ears with our enlightening and insightful analysis. Unfortunately, the trend of losing those games has continued, leaving the vocal portion of the fanbase in the comments sections at large to be having totally rational reactions regarding the state of the team. We spent a lot of time last we...
Feb 27, 2025•1 hr 59 min•Season 4Ep. 127
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 ...
Feb 20, 2025•1 hr 28 min•Season 4Ep. 126
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 f...
Feb 14, 2025•1 hr 47 min•Season 4Ep. 125
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...
Feb 06, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Season 4Ep. 124
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 ...
Jan 30, 2025•1 hr 36 min•Season 4Ep. 123
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 res...
Jan 24, 2025•1 hr 41 min•Season 4Ep. 122
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 ...
Jan 16, 2025•1 hr 42 min•Season 4Ep. 121
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 at...
Jan 09, 2025•1 hr 43 min•Season 4Ep. 120
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 evenin...
Dec 21, 2024•1 hr 46 min•Season 3Ep. 119
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 identif...
Dec 05, 2024•1 hr 31 min•Season 3Ep. 118
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...
Nov 22, 2024•1 hr 48 min•Season 3Ep. 117
We will be mostly focusing on topics around the world of Sporting Kansas City soccer this week, because candidly that is the only place where anything of note is currently happening. Both MLS and NWSL have begun their playoffs and there have been a number of interesting stories emanating from those matchups that caught our eye. The USMNT is convening for their first meaningful matches under Mauricio Pochettino as they take on Jamaica in a home-home series in the semifinals of the CONCACAF Nation...
Nov 14, 2024•1 hr 37 min•Season 3Ep. 116
The offseason has well and truly begun and given the length of time before SKC plays another meaningful game, the feelings of malaise and cynicism regarding the future prospects of the club seem to be permeating the fan base. We spent a fair amount of time talking about the amount of work that Peter Vermes and Mike Burns have in front of them and the length of that timetable was predictably frustrating. We also briefly discussed the comments Vermes made in the press just prior to our recording l...
Oct 31, 2024•1 hr 44 min•Season 3Ep. 115
Sporting KC went out with a whimper as they traveled to Frisco TX on Saturday night to close out a fairly forgettable season against FC Dallas. Much of how the game went was a microcosm of the season as a whole, including giving up a bad goal, making ridiculous mistakes due to poor communication, and Willy Agada being the only one creating chances of any significance in the game. While we may have expected it to be a curtain call for a number of players on the team, most of them didn’t even make...
Oct 23, 2024•1 hr 42 min•Season 3Ep. 115
