Sporting Kansas City (3-7-3, 12 points) will hit the road for a third straight weekend as the team travels to California to take on the San Jose Earthquakes (3-5-4, 13 points) at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday at PayPal Park in San Jose.
The Western Conference clash will be locally televised on 38 The Spot with three hours of coverage beginning at 6 p.m. The broadcast will stream live on SportingKC.com and in the Sporting KC app for viewers in Kansas and Missouri (excluding St. Louis area per MLS policy), as well as ESPN+ for out-of-market subscribers. Radio commentary will also air on SiriusXM FC, Sports Radio 810 WHB and La Grande 1340 AM.
Sporting Kansas City snapped a seven-game regular season winless run on Wednesday with a 2-1 victory over the Colorado Rapids at Children’s Mercy Park and will now return to the road looking to end a nine-game winless streak in away matches that dates back to last October.
MLS All-Star Daniel Salloi scored both goals for Sporting KC on Wednesday, however will be suspended for Sunday along with centerback Andreu Fontas as the match ended 9v9 with four red cards shown by referee Drew Fischer in second half stoppage time.
Manager Peter Vermes will, however, be boosted by the return of midfielder Roger Espinoza and defender Robert Voloder after serving suspensions of their own in the mid-week match.
Vermes, who has now played and coached in 600 regular season games in MLS history, will coach his 417th regular season match on Sunday – making him the manager for exactly half of Sporting Kansas City’s 834 regular season matches all time. Vermes is the longest tenured head coach with one club in MLS history, having served at the helm since August 2009, and the sixth longest-tenured manager in global soccer, according to CIES Football Observatory.
Sporting has reached the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs in 10 of the last 11 seasons under Vermes – during which time the club has won four major championships — and sits three points back of playoff position after Wednesday’s win. In that same span, San Jose reached the postseason only three times and failed to advance in all three occasions.
Looking to return to the success of the club’s earlier era when the Earthquakes won two MLS Cups and two Supporters’ Shield trophies, San Jose parted ways with head coach Matias Almeyda last month after an 0-4-3 start and has gone 4-1-2 in all competitions since with four straight home victories under interim head coach Alex Covelo. On Friday, the club continued its makeover with the appointment of John Wolyniec as technical director to work alongside general manager Chris Leitch.
San Jose is coming off a 3-2 win over Portland on Wednesday in which Cape Verde international Jamiro Monteiro scored twice to earn MLS Player of the Week honors. Monteiro is part of a potent Earthquakes attack that includes 25-year-old striker Jeremy Ebobisse, whose seven goals are second most in MLS, along with playmakers Cristian Espinoza and Jan Gregus who each have six assists on the season – also second most in the league.
Defensively, the Earthquakes have conceded a league-high 28 goals in 12 matches this year, including a league-worst 15 home goals conceded at PayPal Park. All told, San Jose matches have produced a total of 50 goals this season – an average of 4.17 goals per game – which is the highest of any team in Major League Soccer.
Separated by a single point in the standings, Sporting and San Jose will face off for the first of two matches this season between the MLS charter clubs. Sporting is 7-1-4 against San Jose in the last dozen competitive meetings dating back to 2016 and, after going 18 consecutive matches without a road win at San Jose from 2000 to 2016, is 3-1-1 in the team’s last five visits to PayPal Park. Coincidentally, Sunday’s match comes exactly one year to the day of Sporting’s 3-1 win at San Jose in 2021 in which Salloi and Alan Pulido each recorded a goal and an assist.
Pulido remains sidelined with a long-term knee injury, as does fellow designated player Gadi Kinda, as Sporting’s injury report remains littered with key contributors including Nicolas Isimat-Mirin, Graham Zusi, Johnny Russell, Khiry Shelton and Nikola Vujnovic. San Jose will be without Brazilian centerback Nathan (health and safety protocols), while Peruvian left back Marcos Lopez is listed as questionable on the Earthquakes’ player availability report.
Both clubs are also navigating a congested schedule in which each team is currently in a stretch of seven games in a 22-day span and balancing participation in the U.S. Open Cup with Round of 16 matches looming next week. Sporting KC will play host to the Houston Dynamo while San Jose will make the short trip to play USL Championship foe Sacramento Republic FC with quarterfinal berths at stake.
- Story from Sporting KC
