Category: Sporting KC

New York visits Sporting on Sunday

Sporting Kansas City (4-10-4, 16 points) will play host to the New York Red Bulls (8-5-5, 29 points) at 7 p.m. Sunday at Children’s Mercy Park as the club celebrates Fourth of July weekend with the team’s annual Americana theme night featuring a pre-match naturalization ceremony and post-match fireworks on the eve of Independence Day.

Tickets are available on SeatGeek as Sporting KC plays the 200th MLS match at Children’s Mercy Park on a night in which Peter Vermes will coach his 500th game for the club in all competitions.

The longest tenured head coach in Kansas City professional sports history, Vermes has served as Sporting’s manager for 14 straight seasons dating back to 2009. Vermes is Major League Soccer’s all-time leader in matches coached for one club and he has won the most MLS matches among all players and head coaches in league history.

A three-time finalist for MLS Coach of the Year, Vermes was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2013 and was named the first ever MLS Sporting Executive of the Year in 2018. Vermes has won three Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup titles, the most among current MLS coaches, and remains the only person to win MLS Cup as a player and a coach with the same club.

Vermes began his playing career in New York when Major League Soccer launched in 1996 and on Sunday will lead his squad against a Red Bulls side that currently sits atop the Eastern Conference table after a dramatic 2-1 come-from-behind win over Atlanta United FC on Thursday. Sixteen-year-old homegrown forward Serge Ngoma scored the game-winning goal in the 89th minute – becoming the youngest player to score in MLS this season — to cap off a late rally for New York’s fifth straight home win.

The Red Bulls opened the season with seven consecutive road victories across all competitions and lead the league with five away wins in the regular season, however they have gone 0-3-1 away from home since with 2-0 defeats in each of their past three road trips and will be looking to snap a 294-minute road scoreless drought on Sunday.

The cross-conference clash will be a rematch of the 2017 U.S. Open Cup final and features two teams which have booked berths to play in the 2022 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup semifinals on July 27. Should both sides pull off road victories to advance to this year’s U.S. Open Cup final, Kansas City would be the host of the finale this September.

The Red Bulls, who have qualified for the playoffs each of the last 12 years, last won in Kansas City in 2014 and on Sunday will be making their first trip to Children’s Mercy Park since 2019.

Sporting is 4-1-1 against New York in the last six meetings across all competitions and won the most recent encounter, prevailing 2-1 in the 2021 season opener to give SKC a slight edge in the all-time regular season series (22-21-14) between the MLS charter clubs.

Sporting Kansas City will be aiming for the team’s first win of the year against an Eastern Conference opponent (0-3-2) in a match that will feature two elite Scottish wingers going head-to-head. Sporting KC captain Johnny Russell leads the team with seven goals in all competitions this year – and ranks third in MLS with 76 combined goals (45) and assists (31) in the regular season since the start of 2018 – while New York newcomer Lewis Morgan leads the Red Bulls with 10 goals in all competitions, scoring his eighth of the regular season on Thursday.

Sunday’s showdown will be locally televised on 38 The Spot with three hours of coverage beginning at 6:30 p.m. Sunday. The broadcast will also stream live on SportingKC.com and in the Sporting KC app for viewers in Kansas and Missouri (excluding the St. Louis area per MLS policy), as well as ESPN+ for out-of-market subscribers.

Local radio broadcasts will also air on Sports Radio 810 WHB and La Grande 1340 AM.

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Seattle beats Sporting, 3-0

Coming off back-to-back wins and playing the team’s third match in seven days, Sporting Kansas City (4-10-4, 16 points) suffered a 3-0 setback at the Seattle Sounders FC (7-6-2, 23 points) on Saturday afternoon at Lumen Field in Seattle.

The Sounders opened the scoring in the eighth minute as Will Bruin headed home a cross from Cristian Roldan at the top of the six-yard box.

Bruin, a three-time Missouri State High School Soccer Coaches Association Player of the Year, now has 76 career regular season goals while Roldan recorded his 76th career regular season goal contribution for Seattle (30 goals, 36 assists).

After conceding the earliest goal scored by an opponent in the team’s MLS campaign, Sporting came close to leveling the score in the 34th minute. Khiry Shelton, on the eve of his 29th birthday, acrobatically got on the end of a floated pass from Johnny Russell only to see his volley strike the post and the offside flag go up from assistant referee Jeff Hosking.

The first half – which saw Sporting KC make 34 entries into the final third, more than double the 16 credited to the hosts — came to a close with the Sounders nearly doubling their lead. USMNT teammates Jordan Morris and Cristian Roldan combined down the left channel to spring Roldan inside the penalty area but Tim Melia raced off his line with a superb stop to turn away the left-footed effort.

The second half started with Sporting Kansas City’s best scoring opportunity of the afternoon as left back Logan Ndenbe played a well-weighted pass into the path of Cam Duke. The 21-year-old Sporting KC Academy product worked his way past two Seattle defenders and went for goal, narrowly sending his shot wide of the far post from a tight angle along the endline.

Melia produced his second save in the mid-day matinee in the 52nd minute, diving low to his left to corral an attempt from Morris. On the opposite end, Frei was called into action for the first time in the 65th minute as Russell was unmarked on a Felipe Hernandez corner kick however his header bounced straight into the arms of Frei.

Seattle stretched its advantage to 3-0 with a pair of goals in a five-minute span. The home side pounced in the 71st minute with a goal that came in strikingly similar fashion as their first with Morris directing a header into the back of the net from the top of the six-yard box on a pinpoint service from Nouhou. In short succession, Cristian Roldan tapped in the Sounders’ third in the 76th minute to seal all three points on an assist from Morris.

The Sounders continued to threaten a Sporting Kansas City defense that has conceded a league-worst 24 road goals this season and nearly put the exclamation point on the performance in the 80th minute if not for Melia making a series of three saves in a matter of seconds to deny Morris, Jimmy Medranda and Fredy Montero.

Sporting Kansas City will return home to play host to the New York Red Bulls at 7 p.m. on Sunday, July 3, for the club’s annual Americana theme night featuring post-match fireworks. Tickets are available on SeatGeek as Sporting KC plays the 200th MLS match at Children’s Mercy Park on a night in which Peter Vermes will coach his 500th game for the club in all competitions.

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Sporting travels to Seattle for away match this afternoon

Two of the most successful clubs in the past decade of American soccer will meet on Saturday in a nationally televised Western Conference clash when Sporting Kansas City (4-9-4, 16 points) takes on 2022 Concacaf Champions League winners Seattle Sounders FC (6-6-2, 20 points).

Saturday’s match will kick off at 2 p.m. Saturday on ABC and ESPN Deportes.

Local radio coverage will air on Sports Radio 810 WHB and La Grande 1340 AM.

Sporting Kansas City enters the showdown with Seattle coming off back-to-back wins for the first time this season.

Sporting snapped Nashville’s 25-match home unbeaten streak with a 2-1 road win last Sunday and followed the performance with a 6-0 triumph — matching the club record for largest margin of victory — over Union Omaha in the U.S. Open Cup Quarterfinals on Wednesday at Children’s Mercy Park.

Daniel Salloi scored twice for Sporting in the mid-week match — becoming the team’s all-time leading scorer in the U.S. Open Cup — and now has six goals in all competitions this season, one behind Johnny Russell for the team lead.

Russell has six goals in seven career appearances against the Sounders, which stands as the most Sporting’s captain has scored against any MLS opponent.

While Sporting KC is navigating the team’s third match in seven days during a stretch of the schedule in which SKC plays five of six MLS matches away from home, Seattle is currently in the midst of a five-match homestand at Lumen Field.

The Sounders’ home field was selected last week as a FIFA World Cup 2026 host venue and was filled with 68,741 fans last month as Seattle lifted the Concacaf Champions League trophy.

The last time Sporting KC played a reigning Concacaf champion was nearly 20 years ago in August 2002 when the then-Wizards faced the 2000 Concacaf Champions Cup winners LA Galaxy.

Current Sounders assistant coach Preki scored for KC on the day and now works alongside Seattle’s general manager and president of soccer, Garth Lagerwey, who began his MLS career as a teammate with Preki in Kansas City for the league’s inaugural season in 1996.

The Sounders, now poised to become the first MLS team to participate in the FIFA Club World Cup, joined Major League Soccer in 2009 and have become a perennial championship contender alongside Sporting in the Western Conference.

The two sides lead all American MLS clubs with four major domestic trophies in the past decade and are the only two Western Conference teams with 10 or more playoff appearances since 2011.

Seattle narrowly leads the all-time regular season series with a 10-9-4 record. The Sounders went 7-1-1 in the first nine meetings from 2009-2014, however Sporting has gone 8-3-3 since with wins in four of the last five matches and victories in each of the team’s past three trips to Lumen Field.

Sporting Kansas City goalkeeper Tim Melia has an 8-3-2 record with five shutouts and a 1.08 goals against average in 13 regular season appearances against Seattle. Since joining SKC in 2015, Melia’s 63 regular season shutouts are most in MLS with Sounders goalkeeper Stefan Frei a close second having compiled 60 clean sheets in the past eight seasons. Frei ranks third in MLS history in both goalkeeping wins (141) and shutouts (88), and his next appearance will be his 300th in all competitions for the Sounders.

Seattle’s roster, which features a pair of former SKC teammates in defender Jimmy Medranda and midfielder Kelyn Rowe, is headlined by six 2021 MLS All-Stars – Alex Roldan, Cristian Roldan, Nouhou, Yeimar, Joao Paulo and Raul Ruidiaz – as well as 2020 MLS MVP finalists Nicolas Lodeiro and Jordan Morris. Lodeiro leads the team with eight goals in all competitions this year and Cristian Roldan has a team-best eight assists, however Paulo and Ruidiaz are among four Seattle starters sidelined due to injury along with Obed Vargas and Xavier Arreaga.

Manager Peter Vermes will also be without four players on Saturday as Gadi Kinda, Alan Pulido, Nikola Vujnovic and Ozzie Cisneros continue to recover from injuries. Defender Kortne Ford, who scored for Sporting on Wednesday before exiting the match prior to halftime, is listed as questionable on the team’s player availability report.

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