The story of the DC United/Sporting Kansas City game essentially began and ended with the offside call on Ike Opara’s disallowed goal in the 30th minute.  I was at the game, sitting where the RFK Stadium visitors are, deep in the back of the stadium behind the goal.  It’s a bad angle to see an offside call but I must’ve been in a better position than the linesman because Opara was clearly onside to me.  Looking at the screencap confirmed matters but the damage was done.  Regardless of multiple players causing Opara to be onside by about five yards, the goal wasn’t going to be given back and Sporting would have to try even harder to get the leading goal and the three points.

Sporting Kansas City went into Wednesday night’s game against the Seattle Sounders knowing they would have to face, arguably, two of their three fiercest rivals in the same week. With the Houston Dynamo on deck Sunday, Sporting wanted to finally be able to break that stranglehold Seattle has on Sporting at Sporting Park. Even though Sporting KC won the 2012 US Open Cup Final against Seattle, they had to go into penalties after a 1-1 draw. Sporting still has never beaten Seattle at home and only won once in Seattle in 2009. Most of those games, especially the ones taking place at Sporting Park, Seattle won due to a late goal usually in stoppage time. The Sounders have a thing for the dramatics when they play in Kansas City and Sporting very much wanted to close it out early. But to make a bit of a tweak to a quote by Gerald Ford, our long national nightmare continues.

Sporting Kansas City recently finished one of their toughest road trips outside of CONCACAF Champions League as they had to travel to New Jersey to play the New York Red Bulls on Wednesday and then travel across the country to Los Angeles to play the Galaxy three days later on Saturday.  One game provided entertainment and three points while the other was entertaining (for the other team) and no points to speak of.

Sporting Kansas City has seen their share of ups and downs after the first month of the MLS season. In all sports, and especially in MLS, it’s quite difficult to judge the success of a team after the first few games of the season. Major League Soccer is a long season and regardless of how one’s favorite team is doing in March, they may or may not be playing the same way in October. It’s one reason why you haven’t seen me giving my analysis of the first five Sporting Kansas City games. The other, and more realistic reason was that I haven’t had a chance to study the first five Sporting Kansas City games until now (thank you MLS Live). The first month of the season at least gives people a clearer picture as to what to expect.

Sporting Kansas City currently leads the all time series at 3 wins, 3 draws and 1 loss. Philadelphia’s only win against Sporting came in a 4-0 thrashing last June in Philadelphia.

Kansas City begins their 3rd season as the rebranded Sporting Kansas City and they came out with a bang this offseason. New kits, new kit sponsor, new players (new DP), new stadium name, players going to England, it was sort of like a mini rebranding. The only thing that didn’t change was the team name. With the competition tougher and Sporting adding CONCACAF Champions League to their schedule, it will be a long and grinding season.

I wasn’t kidding when I said that this was a busy offseason for Sporting Kansas City. Last week, it was announced that Sporting Kansas City would host the 2013 AT&T MLS All Star Game, July 31 on ESPN. The announcement was celebrated with a press conference at LIVESTRONG Sporting Park with MLS Commissioner Don Garber, Sporting KC Owner Robb Heineman and Kansas City, Kansas Mayor Joe Reardon. I noticed at the time that nobody mentioned LIVESTRONG by name in the entire 20 minute announcement. All mentions of the stadium were generic statements that didn’t mention LIVESTRONG at all. My concerns that it was the beginning of the end of the Sporting/LIVESTRONG partnership were confirmed Tuesday evening when Darren Rovell of ESPN reported that Sporting KC and LIVESTRONG were parting ways effective immediately. Right from the get go, it has all the looks of an ugly, public divorce.

In 2012, Sporting Kansas City won the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup, finished 1st in the Eastern Conference and had four players in the MLS Best XI consisting of the Goalkeeper of the Year, Defender of the Year and an MVP finalist. These don’t sound like the credentials of a team that would be making many moves this offseason. Someone obviously didn’t tell that to Robb Heineman and Peter Vermes because they went to work and didn’t stop until they got the players they wanted. In something that would be similar to “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” Sporting KC announced deal after deal every few days for about three weeks. Here are Sporting’s moves in chronological order.

FC Dallas manager Schellas Hyndman, upon being asked at the postgame presser if the game against Sporting KC got physical or chippy at a couple points. “That’s how you play,” he added. It took quite a while for Sporting to find the cohesive physicality that has put them on top of the single MLS table, with 9 points out of 3 games. The first half’s action rested squarely on FC Dallas’ shoulders, as SKC played through a morass of poor communication and miscues.

no comments

I am (to the best of my knowledge, unless I’ve been replaced...) the Total-MLS writer who covers Sporting KC. However, my March schedule, being a college-town-sports-guy-bartender-at-an-Irish-pub is murderous. I had a Big XII Tournament run to deal with during SKC’s FirstKick opener against DCU. And then, for our home opener, the game I looked forward to all winter (well, at least until schedules were released), I had this little thing called “The Biggest Sales Day of Our Year By a Longshot, St. Patrick’s Day”. We only set our sales record by an extra $3k dollars and worked about 19 hours.

no comments