2025 Wishes

It’s a new year, and with it comes new hopes, new dreams, new expectations for soccer in Kansas City. As I’ve done for going on fifteen years now, here at the KCSJ, back when it was The Blue Testament, all the way back when I did things myself at Down the Byline, here are my wishes for 2025 for soccer in KC.

1. Silverware. Always number one on the list for wishes. The goal of every season for every team is to come home with silverware each year. Sporting KC will be competing for at least three trophies in 2025, the CONCACAF Champions Cup, Supporters Shield, and MLS Cup, plus any others depending on how the league decides to have teams in the US Open Cup and Leagues Cup. The KC Current will have at least two with the NWSL Shield and Cup, plus another if the NWSL x Liga MX Femenil Summer Cup returns for a second year. The KC Comets have the 2025 Ron Newman Cup playoffs coming this year as well after a strong early start to the season. Then for professional teams there’s Sporting KC II in MLS Next Pro. There’s plenty of silverware to be won this year.

2. Sporting KC Make the Playoffs. If I’m being honest, I don’t expect much from Sporting this season. The way the roster looks right now, there are too many holes, too many questions. Obviously there are still roster additions to be made to the team, but even if they do get the number 10 they’ve said they wanted, I still have many questions (spoilers for wishes below).

Does Alan Pulido find any form or does his contract continue to be an albatross around Sporting’s neck again this season? Before he signed his contract extension in 2023, he’d been on a tear for KC, scoring 12 goals in 12 games. Since 9/14/23 when he extension was announced though, he’s scored just eight league goals in thirty-six league games.

Which Daniel Salloi shows up? The one who was an MVP candidate in 2021, the one who had seven goal contributions in 2024, or the one who had just two in 2019? He’s not been as bad as some people say, but he’s also not been worth even the DP in roster construction name currently.

Does the defense make a big leap in 2025? Because currently even with additions coming to the team, the back line, especially in terms of starters seems set given the money KC currently has locked up in their back line. If they don’t make a leap this season, or Joaquin Fernandez doesn’t turn into a Defender of the Year candidate, Sporting’s defense could struggle.

All those questions on the table, making the playoffs in 2025 seems best case scenario for Sporting, even in MLS’s bloated playoff format.

3. A National Team Regular for Sporting. For years of Sporting KC’s existence, they’ve had players representing their nation on the field at the full national team level. In 2024 KC had just three players called into camp with their respective nations, Stephen Afrifa and Zorhan Bassong with Canada and Alenis Vargas with Honduras. Of those three, only Afrifa got on the field for his national team, appearing twice as a late game substitute for Canada in their September friendlies against the US and Mexico. The two caps are tied for the fewest in a single (non-COVID) season with the 2008 season when Davy Arnaud and Jimmy Conrad both made a single appearance for the US.

While not an exact representation of talent on the team, having that representation does put more light on the club and what it is doing to help develop and get players to the next level. Especially when players are doing so and getting regular time.

4. A DP Number 10. More than once since being added as the club’s Sporting Director, Mike Burns has made mention of a DP 10 being a priority for the club. There’s been no rumors of who that potential DP would be, something that’s not surprising in how Sporting does business in the transfer window. But get this done. It doesn’t fix Sporting, but it’d be a step in the right direction.

5. Return to Form for Sporting KC’s 2024 DPs. Since buying out any of the trio of Pulido, Salloi and Nemanja Radoja seems unlikely but Sporting’s ownership, seeing the trio return to form to help Sporting improve in 2025 is my next wish. See some of the comment made above about my questions about Pulido and Salloi, two of Sporting’s three DPs in 2024. Neither lived up to the DP name in 2024. Neither did the club’s third DP, Radoja, who like Salloi was DP in name for roster construction purposes. Hopefully in 2025 the trio return to some form that saw them get the contracts they did. Pulido and Salloi I’ve touched on already, but Radoja struggled at times with injuries but still played 25 games in 2024 adding a goal and four assists. But later in the season as KC seemed to be transitioning to the double-pivot, 4-2-3-1 formation Radoja’s style and game play didn’t match up with what the team tried to do with the dual sixes.

6. KC Current Build on 2024 On and Off the Field. You can’t call 2024 anything but a rousing success for the KC Current, both on and off the field. While they didn’t win the NWSL title this year the team was one of the best in the league under new head coach Vlatko Andonovski finishing fourth in the NWSL on 55 points, closer to first place Orlando Pride (60 points) than fifth place North Carolina Courage (39 points) were to KC. They won the NWSL x Liga MX Femenil Summer Cup. Off the field the club opened CPKC Stadium and sold out every regular season game the team played there. The stadium also hosted the NWSL final as well as the Big XII women’s soccer finals. It was also announced that next year the stadium will host the NCAA D1 women’s championship and the 2026 DII men’s and women’s championships. Overall a fantastic year, the hard part now is maintaining that momentum and building on it to take the team to new heights in 2025. I’m not sure what building on the success of last year looks like, but starting with continued success and winning the NWSL next year is certainly a start.

7. USWNT Call Up for KC Current Player. When I originally wrote this as a wish it had honestly slipped my mind about Hailie Mace earning a cap this year for the US team. Still, for all the success that the Current had on and off the field in 2024, one area that they lacked in was representation with the USWNT. Opportunities are there for players in 2025 though. The highest likelihood of a call up is probably Claire Hutton, the young midfielder who burst onto the scene in 2024 and immediately put herself in pen in KC’s starting eleven. Hutton spent time in 2024 with the US U20 team at the World Cup but has yet to receive a full call up. If she continues 2025 how she played in 2024 a call up should come for Hutton. Another player that most KC fans would probably like to see called up to the US team but most likely won’t at this stage of her career is Lo LaBonta. The Current’s captain has been a mainstay in the team’s lineup since their return to KC. She’s been incredibly solid in the midfield, but at this point in her career a call up just seems unlikely.

8. Comets Finish Top 2 in the MASL Regular Season. The 2024-2025 MASL season has just 1 division instead of the two it has had most prior years, with eight of the twelve teams making the Ron Newman Cup playoffs. The playoff format is also new this year with a single site, the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, CA, hosting the quarterfinals and semifinals of the playoffs with the final returning the MASL’s traditional best of three series. In this new format, on Friday night the one seed will play the eight seed while the two seed will play the seven. The winners of those games will play the winner of the three/six and four/five games that take place on Saturday. Those semifinals take place on Sunday, so finishing first or second (or seventh, eighth) and winning on Friday gets a day of rest before Sunday’s semifinal. So the goal for the Comets should be to get themselves in a position where they get that day of rest before the semifinals.

9. More Balanced MASL Schedule for 2025-2026. This has been a pet peeve of mine for a number of years now with the MASL and its scheduling. I get the league can’t fully balance the schedule due to travel, arena availability, etc. but some level of balancing needs to take place. There are twelve teams in the MASL this year, one division for all twelve teams, and KC doesn’t even play all twelve. The one team KC doesn’t play this year is the Texas Outlaws, meanwhile they play the St. Louis Ambush five times. Last year in the regular season they played two of the six other teams in their division just once, the Baltimore Blast and Milwaukee Wave. Another team in their division, the Monterrey Flash, never made a trip to KC. Especially if the league is going to stick with the single division it’d be nice if the league at least had every team play every other team at least once.

10. UMKC Build on 2024 NCAA Run. In 2024 the UMKC Roos men’s soccer team returned to the NCAA tournament for the first time in sixteen years, making it to the Round of 16, the furthest UMKC has ever made it in the tournament. The team won the Summit League conference tournament and finished the season with a 14-5-3 record. The job now for Ryan Pore and the program to build on that. I’ve always felt that UMKC was a program that could have done more in terms of soccer in KC. There’s enough talent that the program should be able to have success even if you lose some local talent that want to go away for college. Keeping good local talent home playing at UMKC has never been easy, from a personal stand point I remember attending games UMKC played where the opposition started more players from the KC metro than UMKC had on their entire roster. In 2025 I’d like to see UMKC build on this run. They don’t necessarily have to exceed it, but build towards a point where UMKC has sustained success on the field in men’s soccer.

Any specific wishes for 2025 that you have with any of Kansas City’s teams?