Sporting Kansas City (4-11-4, 16 points) will continue the club’s MLS campaign with a trip north of the border to take on reigning Canadian Championship winners CF Montreal (9-7-2, 29 points) at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Stade Saputo.
Saturday’s match will be locally televised on 38 The Spot with three hours of coverage beginning at 6 p.m. 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.
Saturday’s cross-conference clash kicks off a three-game road trip in which Sporting will play in three different time zones in a nine-day span. The challenge comes as four players remain sidelined with injuries – including designated players Gadi Kinda and Alan Pulido – while Graham Zusi missed the club’s last match with a quad injury and is questionable to return.
Montreal is coping with a major absence of its own as MLS MVP candidate Djordje Mihailovic has been sidelined since May 28. The U.S. Men’s National Team midfielder has seven goals and four assists this season for a high-scoring squad that leads the league in first half goals and features eight different players with multiple goals in 2022.
Among those are Mason Toye, who last month completed a 10-month comeback from shoulder surgery, and Romell Quioto, a Honduran international who has six goals and three assists this season, as well as former Sporting KC striker Kei Kamara. The 37-year-old spent five seasons in Kansas City from 2009 to 2013 and his 133 career regular season goals are fourth most in MLS history, one shy of tying Jeff Cunningham for third on the league’s all-time chart.
Sporting has not played in Montreal since June 2018 and last faced Montreal in March 2019 when Johnny Russell scored twice in a record-setting 7-1 victory at Children’s Mercy Park that marked the most goals scored in club history and the team’s largest margin of victory.
Montreal’s nine wins in 2022 are tied for most in the Eastern Conference, however Montreal enters Saturday’s match coming off a 4-0 loss to the LA Galaxy on July 4 which was the side’s most lopsided loss since the 7-1 defeat in Kansas City.
In the all-time series, Sporting holds the advantage with a 7-4-3 record against Montreal since it joined MLS a decade ago. That includes a 5-1-2 mark in the last eight regular season meetings and a winning record (3-2-2) at Stade Saputo.
- Story from Sporting KC