Three Key Details from Sporting KC’s New Coach, CSO and Owner Press Conference

On Tuesday, Sporting Kansas City introduced Raphael Wicky as the fifth coach in team history. There to make the announcement was managing co-owner Mike Illig, President of Soccer Operations David Lee and Wicky himself. The press conference was filled with lots of the generic stuff fans have come to expect from these events. However, there were some good details tucked into the 30 minutes.

Those details are what we are here to talk about.

Player Signings are Coming

Sporting KC report for preseason in Kansas City on Saturday, January 10th. That’s tomorrow!

As of this moment, they only have 17 announced players on their roster. That includes the four new moves they’ve made since the offseason began. To remind you, those are:

• Signing Homegrown Cielo Tschantret
• Trading for Austin FC backup keeper, Stefan Cleveland
• Drafting Generation Adidas signing Kwaku Agyabeng out of Clemson
• Trading for right back Justin Reynolds from the Chicago Fire

Obviously, this is nowhere near enough players to fill out a roster. David Lee did acknowledge the concerns and address the lack of players.

“We’ve got open roster slots that we’re trying to fill as quickly as we can,” started Lee. “I don’t think it was intentional to wait for the head coach or wait for Rafa. We’ve been in conversations with numerous players for a long time. We’re trying to get deals across the line. It’s most important, we get the right players. And it may be slightly easier for me to say because I’m not having to coach the team on Sunday and Monday. But, you know, we want to get the right players at the right time. And so, some of those are taking a little longer than we thought. But we expect to be very busy through the remainder of the window. There’s going to be double digit number of players being acquired.”

Lee finished with saying, “And I’m looking forward to getting more of those across the line as quickly as we can.”

Technically many transfer windows just opened around the world in January. However, the window doesn’t need to be open for teams to sell players. Just for them to be able to replace the guys they sell (which is a reason many teams don’t sell outside of transfer windows). With preseason starting so soon and the transfer window running for several more weeks, it could be a slow trickle of additions in the first chunk of preseason.

That’s another reason the switch to a fall through spring season will alleviate some of these problems. Wicky also indicated he was excited about the change, which is coming in the fall of 2027.

How Sporting KC will Play

When a team has a new coach, everyone wants to know what formation they will play in. When David Lee was announced, he said he didn’t believe in a formation, but rather principles. The “F” word didn’t even come up in the Wicky press conference. But he was asked to explain his tactical style.

“I’d rather have the ball than not have the ball,” began Wicky. “I have been like that as a player. I was a midfielder, and I’ve heard someone telling me when I read about you, you had some grit and aggressiveness. Yeah, that was part, but I was always a technical player. And I think I took that with me as a coach. So, the idea of building up from the back, the idea of having the ball and dominating a game with the ball is going to be a big part of our game. But there is so many other game phases we need to be well as well. I think it’s really important that we’re also a team who likes to defend forward, who likes to be intense.”

“I want my team to be uncomfortable to play against as well. But obviously with possession, then we always have to be careful. It doesn’t really help if you have 65-70 percent possession if you never create a chance. So, we want to have possession with a goal. We want to go forward and create goal scoring opportunities. But we want to do that because I believe in, because David believes in when we do that well from the back, we have bigger chances to actually create chances.”

There is a lot to take from that answer. Many teams want the ball; they want to counter-press when they don’t have it and be effective at goal scoring chances when they do. It’ll take time to see if Wicky can impart his vision, and the vision of David Lee onto the team. It’ll be interesting how John Pulskamp fits into that vision. Sporting KC played the ball long more than any other team in MLS last year. John simply was not good enough with his feet to play out of the back. Has he improved that this offseason? Or will Stefan Cleveland supplant him?

Back to Lee for a moment. He said during the interview process, Wicky gave answers that he really liked and were similar to things he thought about the game of football/soccer. It’s a good reminder that this is Lee’s team. Wicky will take a lot of heat when they lose and praise when they win, but Sporting KC is built with David Lee’s vision in mind.

Youth Development is a Focus

Successful teams around MLS and the world sell players. Teams simply have to make transfers to be profitable. In Major League Soccer, you are at an incredible disadvantage if you don’t sell players to earn General Allocation Money (GAM) and put that back into your roster. It’s a cheat code to spend more.

“In my view, there is no club that succeeds consistently in MLS without developing their players,” said Lee. “Whether you’re an academy player, whether you’re from the second team, whatever point in your journey you are, we need to develop players. That is how you can succeed in a salary cap world. And so, it was really important that the head coach we brought in had demonstrable experience in developing players, which Rafa has.”

The good news is, the team is looking to develop their talent. Wicky echoed many of the things Lee said on Tuesday and back at his initial unveiling as CSO/General Manager.

“There will be a lot of opportunities as well for academy players,” began Wicky. “So, we’re going to go to training camp and there will be spots open for academy players. And that’s something I have done my whole career. And I’m really excited as well for these young kids to make their first step in professional football and get experience at camp. And you never know. Almost in every preseason, there is a surprise. And I’m excited to see who is going to surprise us in those next six weeks.”

Wicky has a history of working for Swiss clubs that sell to bigger leagues around the world. I suspect we’ll see more of that going forward with Wicky and Lee. David said as much and snuck in a little line about Sporting KC’s forthcoming success.

“I think there is an opportunity always to develop players,” said Lee. “And like I mentioned, in the salary cap world, you’re always dealing with challenges where, as you’re more successful, as we will be in the coming years ahead, it gets difficult to keep all of the players together. The most important thing that you can do is build a development environment where players come and develop.”

Quick Hits

There are so many good quotes, and I would encourage you to watch the entire press conference. If you can’t, here are a few other highlights.

• Lee and Wicky seem to deny Wicky was a finalist for the New York City FC job last year, as reported by ESPN. Curious.
• David Lee wanted a coach with head coaching experience. That likely eliminated any guys without that on their resume.
• “Culture” and “Human” were buzz words. Culture was used 14 times with human getting 10 mentions. Wicky went as far as to say, “culture beats tactics.” Lots of leaders and businesses speak of culture. We’ll see if Wicky can implement that and get the boys to play for each other.
• Lee: “We’re in the process of finalizing the coaching staff… hopefully an announcement very, very soon.”
• Illig also said there is lots of work on scouting and analytics too.
• Wicky doesn’t have his Visa yet and cannot coach until he does. He won’t be coaching, but will be present, when preseason starts.
• Wicky is excited about Kansas City as a city and can’t wait to explore.

Full Press Conference