Podcasts
Assessing Sporting KC’s Season 10-Games In
It’s not much fun when you aren’t winning. Let’s give ours and Vermes’ assessments of the Sporting KC season 10 games in.
For the Glory KC is back with the 82nd episode of the show!
Sporting Kansas City are officially 10 games into their 2024 season and it’s a benchmark that Peter Vermes likes to focus on. The team is 2-3-5 (11 points) and sitting in 10th place. It’s better than last season, but that’s an incredibly low bar to clear.
The KC Soccer Journal asked Peter Vermes how he felt about where the team was, and his answers left something to be desired. My colleague Jimmy Mack Tweeted out the quotes.
Here's Vermes' full response to @PlayFor90's question about the state of #SportingKC after 10 games pic.twitter.com/Iutbc7Qn0t
— Jimmy Mack (@jcmack03) April 28, 2024
Sheena and I weigh in the quotes, the play against Minnesota United FC in the 2-1 loss and the rumor from Taylor Twellman that signings are coming in the summer and where we’d like to see those signings. Oh, and we have to talk about this meme-worthy image and subsequent work from Offside Modeling that confirmed it was onside.
No one show Peter Vermes this Tweet! #SportingKC
https://t.co/Yi6gEKkjoU— Chad Smith (@PlayFor90) April 28, 2024
The Kansas City Current thankfully brought us happier things to talk about in their 3-1 come-from-behind win over Angel City FC in Los Angeles on Friday night. Plus, we went to game one of the KC Comets attempt to win the Ron Newman Cup in the MASL Final on Sunday afternoon. Game two is Tuesday.
In the Digital Crawl, we hit a few topics, including:
- The new KC Current development around the stadium
- Dom Dwyer signing with the Oakland Roots
- The Mayor of Indianapolis Talking MLS Expansion
- Former KC player signings in MLS and the USL Super League
Here is a rundown of topics (and approximate start times):
- Our Experience with the MASL Finals and the KC Comets – 2:03
- Sporting KC lose to MIN – 8:28
- Taylor Twellman says SKC signings are coming – 46:22
- The KC Current make a Big Comeback – 53:03
- The Current fire the head of the medical department – 1:07:57
- Errors and Corrections are back – 1:12:20
- Digital Crawl – 1:17:19
Upcoming Schedule:
- KC Comets at Chihuahua Savage – Tuesday, April 30 @ 9:05 PM CT
- Sporting KC at Real Salt Lake – Saturday, May 4th @ 8:30 PM
- KC Current at Houston Dash – Sunday, May 5th @ 12:00 PM
- Sporting KC II host North Texas SC – Sunday, May 5th @ 6:00 PM
Spotify took away our ads, so we turned on “Listener Support.” Don’t feel obligated, but if you have a few spare bucks and are a fan of the pod, we’d appreciate your donation.
Big thanks to Splitter Conspiracy (listen to them here) for our theme music made with the permission of the KC Cauldron.
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Sporting KC Linked with Norwegian Midfielder
Trying Not to Overreact to Sporting KC Preseason
Minnesota United Defeat Sporting KC 3-0 in Preseason
New Sporting KC Kit Numbers Unveiled
Sporting KC Sign 15-Year-Old Zamir Loyo Reynaga
Sporting KC Add Two Defenders in Meyer and Reid
Trying to Set a Sporting KC Depth Chart
Streaming Sporting KC Preseason, Feist Re-Signs, Wicky Coaching
Sporting KC II Hire Lee Tschantret as New Coach
To echo other commenters: Vermes created a “us vs them” position between fans and Vermes. That relationship is tainted and Vermes has done nothing to repair it. Vermes needs to be let go or he needs to offload significant portions of his role. If we are going to compete on the highest level of MLS we need to decentralize away from Vermes and hire people to fulfill singular roles. Does vermes suck at game management because he doesn’t have the time to review and improve?
The playoff line is not good enough. When was our last trophy? When was our last MLS cup? When was our last deep playoff run?
Come on bro. Fans were taking “Vermes Out” posters into the stadium. They were chanting that he should be fired. They were bullying people on social media who disagreed that Vermes should be fired. Also, on social media, people were literally cursing Peter Vermes’s name.
Him coming out after a game and saying, directly to those peoples’ faces, that he thought it was disrespectful and uncool, and then rubbing their own nastiness in their face a little bit, is not creating an “us vs them” position. Fans did that.
Also, what do you expect him to do to repair it? Literally every time he’s talked about or to fans outside of that one occasion he has been effusive with praise. I don’t think a person should have to apologize for confronting someone who is smack talking them. Maybe he could apologize for I-told-you-so-ing once things turned around and “be the bigger person” but y’all don’t want that for real. You just want him gone. And I agree, his time appears to be over, but there’s a big difference between “a coach who refuses to rotate players can’t find success in this version of MLS” and blind and largely unjustified hatred.
Oh and our last deep playoff run was last year. If winning 3 games and making conference semis isn’t deep then what is?
And last thing: Vermes himself literally WANTS to decentralize. He is the one that told them to hire a Sporting Director and get him out of the business side of soccer. In his national interview before the Miami game he finally verbalized directly what’s been hinted at for years: that he hasn’t been involved in the contracts side of the thing since Bliss was promoted in 2018. It’s not his fault that ownership chose a turd that the fans rejected to be SD. Maybe he had to sign off on it, and he needs to own that, but from everything we’ve heard the decision sounds like it was an ownership one.
They didn’t just hire a turd though. By all accounts, they hired PV’s turd. So, there’s that.
By literally nobody but fans’ accounts. The team referenced an agency and the ownership. All Vermes ever said was that he knows the guy.
A&W with the facts. Love it
GW was not on the list of recommended final candidates – I believe that was referenced in the Athletic.
Everything else still points to ownership. Vermes couldn’t even answer questions about the process and who was involved when asked about if any women were consulted. He just said that there are women in the ownership group so he supposed so. All the questions he got even before the major outcry welled up was basically “go and ask Mike.”
Vermes was quoted as recommending GW because he was looking for someone that had a record of success, knowledge and experience of MLS rules and I can’t recall the third thing. Per Vermes’s words: GW was the only one that fit all of the boxes. Ownership didn’t expound upon what they were looking for outside of referencing the consulting agency.
Yes, fans did what fans will always do, but as the head of a program, he cannot react that way. He isn’t new to the game. He knows that. He did it on purpose and then the team choked when it counted. Refs or not. We eeked into the playoffs off a wildcard game and then came off the STL match as though we proved ourselves enough.
What he did was say “see, I told you so” and then proceed to finish subpar.
Without those things happening, you could take a lot of his mannerisms and responses and be optimistic or forgiving. Him doing what he did in the brewhouse changed the optics on every interaction after that. It told everyone exactly how he feels about the fans and questions from anyone that isn’t him.
Would an apology help? For some, yes. It would demonstrate humility and recognition of reacting emotionally – a perfectly human thing to do. Carrying on without any admission of fault indicates again that he doesn’t regard anyone else as worthy of an answer.
Once more, this changed when his title changed. If he were just a coach, the expectations would match that. But he is more than that, isn’t he? He is over all things soccer. All things. Even if he farms out some work, he gets the final say. So he had to sign off on the hiring.
If he is indeed the president of all things soccer, he needs to open up more and be a lot more tactful with media questions. I think he refuses to do that on principle. Why do I think that? His little post-game speech last year. He refused to address the GW stuff, dismissed concerns about dropped points, fails to relearn his lessons about squad rotation, cannot motivate his team to close out games, is failing to identify an on-field leader, is whining (incorrectly) about refs dictating the games, and embarrassing the team by pulling up a tablet in a post-game interview. I don’t think any of those reasons are blind hatred. I happen to find them extremely valid.
Lastly, a second round defeat isn’t deep (in my opinion), it means we beat one opponent.
I would upvote this 100x if I could
Thank you for writing this and saving me the time. I’d just add a reminder that in no other season in MLS history would SKC have even made the playoffs. They were only there because MLS expanded the field even further in a widely-panned move, and our first “win” was against an even worse team that had even less business being in the “playoffs”. The STL series win was legit but it would never have happened without playoff dilution.
From an SKC press release: “As head of the club’s soccer operations, Vermes will oversee newly hired Sporting Director Gavin Wilkinson.”
He’s not out of the business side if he’s overseeing the guy they hired to do that, and if he wasn’t consulted on the hire of someone he’s supposed to be managing, that in itself is a serious problem.
Longest tenured coach in the league. Hasn’t reached MLS cup in a decade. Other managers have won it and been fired for performance at this point.
Signs players who need a visa to play the week the season starts, save this year. Even though he was in charge since we got bounced from the playoffs and could have had moves lined up. Got smashed in ccl running 11 players into the ground. Even with a big lead over a weak Toluca, he mismanaged subs.
Signed Khiry Shelton and his friends son Daniel Salloi to multi year deals. Gives Dan the 10. Lmao
I’m trying to figure out why you’re defending him. His time is up. He got lucky to win mls cup. It was so gd cold we got it done. That’s because of Jimmy Neilson, not PV.
He’s had full control of the roster and tactics for a decade plus. Pat Mahomes was 15 when PV became coach/dictator. Down with this regime.
Hey, Chad, is there a way to DM you? I have a question about Current tickets that doesn’t need to take up board space.
You could email them, I think they have an address in the show notes!
Good call! Thanks.
You can email Chad and ForTheGloryKC@gmail.com or message him on twitter at Playfor90!
Thanks Wife.
Elon blocked Twitter DMs unless I pay (which I won’t). But yeah, email the podcast (which you did… sorry for being slow to the comments. I’m trying to take mental breaks as all the losing sucks the life out of me).
I think Matt Doyle’s take on Sporting at this point in the season is just about spot on. He mentions how all the things we’re seeing point to a stake team/organization, and he’s spot on.
We need a refresh. We have for at least a few years, but last season, followed up by this season being in a hardly better position at the exact same point with – what I consider – a much less “light at the end of the tunnel” outlook, further highlight the need for some major changes.
*stale team