Sporting KC
Sporting KC v Philadelphia Union: Preview, Predictions & How to Watch
Sporting Kansas City look to find their first win of the 2023 season in their sixth (!!) game of the season. They hit the road to face the Philadelphia Union and the KC Soccer Journal has you covered with what you need to know.
Sporting KC @ Philadelphia Union
When: Saturday, April 1, 2023 at 6:30 PM CT
Where: Children’s Mercy Park
How to Watch/Stream: Apple MLS Season Pass (subscription required)
Be sure to check out our NEW sister site, Philadelphia Soccer Now, for plenty of in-depth coverage of the Union.
Five games and zero wins. Two straight losses, including a rough 4-1 outing at home last weekend against the Seattle Sounders. It all adds up to a Sporting Kansas City team that is struggling to find out who they are. Sure, there are excuses with the millions of dollars in missing superstar players, but no one wants to hear them. The fans, and the players themselves, just want results.
Those may be hard to come by this weekend as the team hits the road for the fourth time in six games this season and head to last year’s MLS Cup runners-up, the Philadelphia Union.
The Union were league-wide favorites to be a top contender to win lots of trophies in 2023. However, they’ve gotten off to a bit of a rough start. They are 2-3-0, including a loss last week at home against Orlando. They are mixing in MLS league play with CONCACAF Champions League, and we know what that can do to a team (see: Sporting KC circa 2019, Seattle in 2022, etc.).
Despite the rough start for both teams, Philly find themselves above the playoff line at 8th place in the Eastern Conference in a four-way tie. And somehow Sporting KC are only two points below the playoff line in the Western Conference despite having just two points through five games. (Surely, you’ve heard us mention how bad the new playoff format is?)
And no matter how tone deaf it may be, Peter Vermes is not wrong that it’s not a must win. But they sure better win soon!
A lot made of the Vermes comment about must wins today. Here is full question and answer from PV. #SportingKC pic.twitter.com/PSPxbaY3YD
— Daniel Sperry (@sperrydaniel94) March 29, 2023
Philadelphia’s Recent Form
- Feb 25th vs. Columbus Crew – 4-1 Win
- March 4th @ Inter Miami CF – 0-2 Loss
- March 11th vs. Chicago Fire – 1-0 Win
- March 18th @ CF Montreal – 2-3 Loss
- March 25th vs. Orlando City – 1-2 Loss
That Columbus win looks good in retrospective, but their only other league win is against Chicago. They also played two CCL games against Alianza, drawing 0-0 on the road and winning 4-0 at home.
Importantly, they also have a BIG game in CCL against Atlas (Liga MX) on Tuesday, so maybe they rest some players against Kansas City.
What’s New in Philly in 2023?
There hasn’t been much change in Philly year-over-year and why would there be? They were so good last year. They only have five additions and five subtractions.
IN: There are no “big” additions, but they did add some key depth pieces in Andres Perea (via trade from Orlando City), CB Damion Lowe (via trade from Miami) and Joaquin Torres (via trade from Montreal). It’s funny how they lost to all the teams they did trades with!
They also added another Homegrown (it’s what Philly does!) in forward Nelson Pierre and re-signed GK Joe Bendik and added GK Holden Trent via the draft.
OUT: The biggest move is the transfer of young talent Paxten Aaronson to Eintracht Frankfurt (Germany). Outside of that they declined the option of forward Corey Burke and made a couple fringe roster moves, including the mutual termination of the contract of defender Abasa Aremeyaw.
Injury Report
Sporting KC:
Sporting KC Injury Updates and Lineup Predictions v Philadelphia
Philadelphia: Sounds like it may be questionable designations for Andre Blake and Kai Wagner, but nothing official yet.
Jim Curtin says Andre Blake is back in training.
Kai Wagner is getting a scan on his hamstring as a precaution.
“We should be at pretty much full strength for Kansas City.”
— Joe Tansey (@JTansey90) March 29, 2023
Stats
Sporting KC
Goals: Daniel Salloi, Willy Agada (1)
Assists: Uhhh… None.
Philadelphia
Goals: Julian Carranza, Daniel Gazdag, Mikael Uhre (2), Andres Perea, Joaquin Torres (1)
Assists: Gazdag (4), Jose Martinez (2), three with one (1)
Predictions
As we talked about on For the Glory KC this week, the Philadelphia Union hadn’t lost at home since September of 2021. That is until last week when they lost to Orlando City SC. I still think that can be written off as a bit of a fluke since multiple players were gone on international duty and goalkeeper Andre Blake was out with an adductor injury. According to Jonathan Tannenwald of the Philadelphia Inquirer, he “could return” on Saturday.
Andre Blake on schedule for return Saturday against Sporting Kansas City
“The hope is that he does play on Saturday,” Philadelphia head coach Jim Curtin.
Couple that with Sporting KC being winless in five games and coming off back-to-back losses, and it all looks pretty bleak. That all adds up to me being unable to predict anything but a loss until Sporting Kansas City shows something different. Maybe Johnny Russell and Alan Pulido light the world on fire this weekend. One can only hope.
It can’t be ruled out that Philly don’t roll out their true starting lineup with the big CCL game on Tuesday against Atlas coming up. If they are taking CCL seriously, maybe they punt on this game and Kansas City can sneak in and steal some points. But I can’t pick that, until KC show me something!
PREDICTION: 2-1 Sporting KC Loss
Prefer your preview in audio form? We’ve got you covered:
For the Glory KC: Sporting KC v Philly & KC Current v Portland
KC Current Lose Late to AFC Toronto in World Sevens
KC Current Win Over Tigres in Dramatic Fashion at World Sevens
2026 FIFA World Cup draw: Who is in the USA’s group? Who is coming to Kansas City?
KC Current Lose World Sevens Opener to Flamengo
Preview: Women’s College Cup in Kansas City
Sporting KC Part Ways with Interim Coach Kerry Zavagnin
KC Current Playing for $5 Million in World Sevens this Week
More on Rumored Sporting KC Coaching Candidate Raphael Wicky
2026 FIFA World Cup draw: Who is in the USA’s group? Who is coming to Kansas City?
3-0 Philly win.
Omg, you guys don’t know how happy I am to be banned from SBNation. Thank you!
I have been locked out of TBT but somehow I could still select a user to ban. Actually went to my former SBNation boss to ask him and he thought I was crazy. Then I found the work around. Not sure if it accomplished what you want but happy to do it.
I am grateful. All of my comments are hidden now.
Doesn’t look like a good week to get on track. 3-1 Philly wins
I think somehow SKC will pull this one off.
Any chance there is a notice on the article for new or number of comments? Could totally be missing it and know it is all a work in progress. Thanks!
This is something we want and have requested. It was my biggest sticking point because knowing others commented might make you want to read them, or reply. So TBD.
You can subscribe to a comment thread to get only replies to yourself or ALL the replies. I’m playing around, but I think it’ll be something for our developer.
The subscribe option seems set up to send emails whenever a new comment shows up, which sounds like it could get old fast. I totally get that the commenting system on this platform won’t/can’t be the same as the old one. Curious what ends up being possible or not. For example, the live-commenting style of SBN was what made game threads practical and enjoyable. Won’t be the same if comments don’t flow naturally in real time. I’m sure you all are thinking about this in the background.
I’m gonna be contrary and say this feels like a trap game for the Union. 2-1 win for SKC with Pulido and Russell (and maybe Rosero?) making a difference. That’ll stop anyone calling me a whiny pessimist.
Love the new site so far. Hope everyone has fun getting the inevitable bugs worked out. I decided not to port my old username over, that was always more of a Royals name and never really made sense in a soccer context. Bye, Farmhand!
No more Farmhand nickname?!!? This will be hard to process, but I will get over it.
No “disgusted optimist” rebrand? Lame.
ETA: lol at that ancient profile pic of me!!!
Everyone is changing their usernames…. I don’t know what to do with this information.
Is the GIF lifestyle no more? That will be very tragic.
I’m the artist formerly known as Ked 😉
Oddly, the avatar by my name is linked from my WordPress account even though I’m a “guest” commenter on here. The attached photo was a test to see if it was a true attachment or a way to do a profile pic (apologies if it’s huge to those not on mobile).
Well, you could start going by Sad Chmith. Except you’re the resident happy bluebird.
But Kat, who did you used to be in your previous TBT life?!!?!? These new names are confusing. lol.
“Disgusted optimist” is a great line but a terrible username; people inevitably shorten handles (see how often I was called “farm”) and I don’t want to start going by “disgust”!
We need the developer to let us have profile images without linking to another account. Overworked, underpaid writers, make it so!
This will take some getting used to!
Losing the farmhand username is a tough loss. Although, in all fairness, for the longest time, I thought you were farmland. haha! 🙂
I had no idea so many people were attached to that identity…