What is an Ideal Lineup for Sporting Kansas City?

To say the last few weeks of Sporting Kansas City soccer have been bad, would be a bit of an understatement. Since the team’s first, and only, win of the 2026 Major League Soccer season against the LA Galaxy, Sporting KC have dropped four straight results. They’ve lost by two goals or more against all four teams, including last night’s debacle against USL Championship side, Colorado Springs Switchbacks, in the US Open Cup.

Coming into 2026, most pundits and fans were saying it was likely to be bleak. Professional writers were putting Sporting KC at or near the bottom in the Western Conference. Through seven league games, that is where they currently reside.

The roster wasn’t really built. There is an argument to be made it still isn’t. The coach was hired late. Rapha Wicky didn’t even get to coach officially for a few weeks of preseason due to waiting on his visa. The front office, scouting, and analytics departments were all incomplete (and mostly remain that way).

There is a cavalcade of excuses. To Wicky’s credit, he’s not using them. But, while we all suspected it might not go well, it is still tough to watch.

One of the biggest problems to this writer’s eye, is inconsistency in the lineup. There is no chemistry, because through eight games (seven in MLS and one in the US Open Cup), the same 11 players have yet to start a game together. Add to that new signings arriving over the last few weeks and a slew of early season injuries, and you have the recipe for rough results from an incomplete team.

Despite all that, let’s try and look through the players that are on the roster so far, because this is the team until the summer, and see where guys best fit together.

Principles Not Formations

One thing that makes the “ideal lineup” exercise hard is that the team doesn’t play one consistent formation. They have principles of play they follow instead.

Take the US Open Cup game last night. The team started out in what appeared to be a 4-2-3-1 but by the second half, they were definitely playing a back three. As the game got more out of hand, Wicky tried, “oops, all wingers” with Shapi, Afrifa and Harris all on the field together. That didn’t last long though, as Shapi was incorrectly red carded briefly after that change.

One consistent idea we’ve seen from Wicky in recent weeks, is he wants to play with wingers. Whether those are wingers in a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1, or wide midfielders in a 4-4-2, he finally has four healthy wingers on his roster (Capita Capemba, Calvin Harris, Shapi Suleymanov and Stephen Afrifa).

The problem with all those formations based on how poorly the team is currently playing is that only allow for two center backs to be on the pitch.

Exploring a Back Three

At multiple times throughout the year, Wicky has played three CBs at once. Sometimes, in a proper back three/five and at other times with a CB playing nominally as a fullback (both on the right – Jansen Miller or Ian James – and on the left – Wyatt Meyer).

It hasn’t exactly consistently worked, but I can’t get co-host of the Home and Away podcast, Cody Welton, out of my head. To paraphrase him, ‘when you have no good center backs, it’s better to have more of them on the field at once.’

Now it’s a harsh take, but only Orlando City (24) and CF Montreal (18) have allowed more goals than Sporting KC (17).

Looking across the five CBs currently with the team (Ethan Bartlow, Diego Borges, Meyer, Miller and James), only Bartlow has extensive experience as a starter. Everyone else is either very inexperienced, very young, or both. Can they get better? Of course! But right now, they need some help.

Another benefit of playing with three in the back, is you aren’t really limited to ‘proper center backs’ when you think of the three players. Guys like Jayden Reid or Zorhan Bassong have the chops defensively to be the left sided CB in a back three (though I think longer term the hope is Borges fills that role).

On the right, Justin Reynolds probably wouldn’t fit that role, but he could easily be a wingback in a back three. He’s mostly played well at RB/RWB. And if he’s out there and Reid/Bassong is on the left side, the team can shift in and out of a back three/four since Reid/Bassong are naturally fullbacks.

As for who the CBs should be, there is no clear answer. They’ve all had good moments, and they’ve all had cringe-worthy mistakes. I’d probably play Bartlow (only on the right though, his one time on the left was a disaster) with James or Borges next to him. Borges has very limited pro minutes and it’s show in his two, short rest starts, so I’d probably lean towards playing James with Bartlow.

Once Or Blorian arrives in the summer, the floor of this group should take a substantial leap up.

The Midfield

I’m going to consider three starting midfield spots. Technically, if the team is in a 3-4-1-2, the wingbacks could be considered midfielders, but I’ll address that later. When I’m talking about the midfield I’m talking about the one or two defensive midfielders (two in that formation) and the one attacking midfielder.

If healthy, there is little debate that Designated Player Manu Garcia should be on the field as well as new Targeted Allocation Money signing, Lasse Berg Johnsen. Who plays with them is more up in the air.

Most of the time, Wicky has favored Homegrown Jacob Bartlett over Homegrown Jake Davis. For me, Bartlett makes too many mistakes and has too small of a passing range to be starting regularly. I trust he can come into a game and help out, as well as run for days, but I want to see Davis build a partnership with Berg Johnsen.

If neither of them can form that partnership, it’ll be interesting the caliber of midfield addition that David Lee looks to make for the summer window. They could both end up on the bench or Davis could end up back at RB/RWB.

As far as where Manu plays. He may have been at his best as a deep-lying playmaker earlier in the year. Maybe we see more of that? Davis has shown the ability to roam all over the midfield and cover ground. He could move forward more when Manu drops deep. Somehow, Manu needs to touch the ball more.

Everyone Else

That only leaves four spots open. Two forwards, a left wingback and of course goalkeeper. Obviously, Dejan Joveljic will fill one of the other two spots. I imagine Capita Capemba should be up next to him. Capita seems to be a creative player based on his highlights and can make runs at the back line to stretch the defense. That’s something Harris is good at as well. But I lean towards Capita for his ability to interchange with Dejan and Manu once they build chemistry.

The LWB spot is tricky. Maybe it’s just Bassong when he’s finally healthy. We’ve already seen Shapi here as well. I’m not sure of the defensive chops of guys like Afrifa, Harris or Capita to play here, but whoever does, needs to have the gas to be all the way forward and all the way back at times. If they aren’t getting back, a “back five” is essentially just a back four again suddenly.

As far as goalkeeper, it’s probably just going to be John Pulskamp for now. The only other healthy GK on the roster is 18 years old. John has given up goals he shouldn’t, but he’s also been hung out to dry far too often by a poor defense. How much of that is on him for not directing traffic is up for debate. Once Stefan Cleveland is healthy though, he probably at least needs a shot at the job. Pulskamp hasn’t played well enough to be a write it in pen starter.

Long Term

I think this team will eventually settle into a more proper back four. But until they can stop leaking goals, they need more players staying deeper for bigger portions of the game. They can try to use some of their newly acquired speed (Capita, Harris) to open up defenses, but they simply need more players behind the ball until they have better players or those players improve significantly.

That would require a tactical change from Wicky. He wants to play with the ball, but so far, the team hasn’t shown they can link together enough passes to play this way. They don’t need to go full Minnesota United and bunker and counter and play ugly soccer, but they aren’t ready to play beautiful soccer yet.

Maybe they will be after the World Cup break and the ‘second preseason.’ But there are seven games to go before then and they cannot lose them all.