Sporting Kansas City (7-3-6, 6th place) will reach the halfway-point of the team’s regular season run when it visits the Vancouver Whitecaps FC (10-7-2, 1st place) at 8 p.m. on Sunday.
Sporting KC boasts the fewest losses — and goals allowed — of any MLS team this year while leading all clubs in scoring with 1.56 goals per game through the first four months of the 2015 campaign.
The match will air live on KMCI-TV 38 the Spot locally and on SKCTV affiliates across the Midwest with three hours of on-site coverage beginning at 7:30 p.m. In addition, radio broadcasts will be available for local listeners on Sports Radio 810 WHB (English) and La Grande 1340 AM (Spanish).
The MLS Week 19 finale will feature Major League Soccer’s best two teams, based on points per game, led by several of the league’s top performers. In net, Sporting KC starter Tim Melia leads MLS with a 0.63 goals against average (GAA) in 2015 while Vancouver’s David Ousted is the only goalkeeper with 10 wins this season. The reigning MLS Player of the Month, Ousted has won three straight Save of the Week honors and his 1.14 career GAA is fifth best in MLS history.
Offensively, Sporting KC midfielder Benny Feilhaber ranks second in MLS with nine assists this year and has been on the scoresheet with a goal or an assist in each of his past four MLS matches. Sunday’s clash will also showcase two of the top scoring newcomers in Major League Soccer with Whitecaps FC forward Octavio Rivero and Sporting KC striker Krisztian Nemeth each leading their teams with seven goals on the season.
Rivero (Uruguay) is one of Vancouver’s three designated players from South America along with midfielders Matias Laba (Argentina) and Pedro Morales (Chile). The latter was Major League Soccer’s Newcomer of the Year in 2014, though has missed a month of action with a calf injury.
Both teams will be without two players on Sunday due to national team commitments during the 2015 CONCACAF Gold Cup. Sporting KC designated player Graham Zusi is with the U.S. Men’s National Team, who will face Haiti at 7:30 p.m. tonight (FOX Sports 1 and UniMas), while tomorrow’s Group B match between Canada and Jamaica will feature Marcel de Jong (Sporting KC), Russell Teibert (Whitecaps FC) and Darren Mattocks (Whitecaps FC).
With back-to-back matches ahead against Canadian opponents, Sporting KC will take to the turf at BC Place — the site of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup final one week earlier — seeking the club’s second road win of the season (1-3-3) and first against a Western Conference opponent (0-3-2). Manager Peter Vermes led Sporting KC to five straight unbeaten results against the Whitecaps since their entry into Major League Soccer in 2011 before that streak was snapped a year ago with a 2-0 loss in the lone 2014 meeting.
Like Sporting KC, the Whitecaps FC have won three of their last four matches and also played the Colorado Rapdis in their previous outing. Though Sporting KC earned a 2-0 victory over the Rapids at home on June 27, Vancouver fell 2-1 in Colorado on the Fourth of July to conclude a five-game road trip.
In-game updates can be found online at SportingKC.com/GameOn, via Twitter at @SKCGameday and through the Sporting Club Uphoria mobile app.
– Story from Sporting KC