Home and Away - A Sporting KC Podcast

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...

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

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 defensive...

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...

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 t...

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 progr...

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...

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/Suppo...

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...

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 d...

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 pret...

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...

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 t...

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 to...

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 looki...

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...

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 ge...

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 c...

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 i...

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 h...

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....

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 sol...

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...

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 Mauri...

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 frust...