Sporting KC
OPINION: Thank You Peter, But It’s Time to Go
Peter Vermes has been a huge part of Sporting KC’s history, but every chapter has an end, and it’s time for KC to go a new direction.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ‘The KC Soccer Journal.’ Any content provided by our authors are of their opinion.
Wednesday night at Children’s Mercy Park was the 903rd league game and 1,066 across all competitions for Sporting Kansas City. The club’s manager, Peter Vermes has been in charge for about 54 percent of those games over his over fifteen plus years in charge of the club. Over the past couple of months, I’ve been regularly thinking of a quote from The Dark Knight movie; “you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” After a lackluster 2-1 defeat to the Vancouver Whitecaps, it feels like it is time to say goodbye to Peter Vermes as the club’s manager, chief soccer officer, and whatever other offices he holds within the club.
Since the start of the 2022 season, Sporting KC has averaged 1.14 points per game (PPG) over the last eighty-three league games. In that stretch of time, only five teams in the league have a worse PPG record. Of the ten teams with the lowest PPG since the start of the 2022 season, Kansas City is one of two teams still with the same head coach who started the 2022 season along with Atlanta United.
Vermes is the most decorated coach in Sporting’s history, winning three US Open Cup’s and an MLS Cup during his tenure as manager. He’s a Sporting Legend and his name will forever be on the stadium as such. That doesn’t mean that he should be immune from the axe when times go bad and remain bad.
Over the past number of years Sporting’s play on the field has slid and the results haven’t been there. After a 2-1 playoff loss to Real Salt Lake in the 2021 playoffs, KC has not been one of the league’s better teams, the numbers back that up. The success in the second half of the 2023 season masked a number of issues with the team, and unfortunately the team didn’t do enough to address it in the offseason.
In 2022 and 2023 there was an excuse, the team was without two Designated Players, Gadi Kinda and Alan Pulido. They both missed all of 2022 and at the start of the 2023 season were still working themselves up into game fitness after a year off the field. Sporting responded and went on a very good run that allowed them to make the 2023 playoffs, get past the San Jose Earthquakes and St. Louis City before falling to the Houston Dynamo.
How did KC respond heading into 2024? They lost one of their DPs as Gadi Kinda returned to Israel. They rebuilt for 2024 by adding Memo Rodriguez, Zorhan Bassong, Alenis Vargas, and Ryan Schewe. Those are the only four players who were new to the Sporting roster in 2024, with three of them having appeared for the first team in 2024. The rest of the roster was returning talent, all a year older, giving Sporting one of the oldest rosters in the league. So far in 2024, they’ve fielded the four oldest starting 11s in the league.
Now, whether part of that was because the club was in the process of hiring a sporting director and were planning to hit the summer window harder, or whether it was an attempt to “run it back” based on the thought/hope that they could maintain the run of form they had in the second half of 2023 is a question for another time. As things stand though the team isn’t performing and hasn’t been for a while. For the second time in the last two years, KC has a winless run of at least nine games. It’s good to have consistency and know that a string of bad results isn’t going to end things, but over the past two and a half years there seems to be more than enough data that things for Sporting aren’t trending in the right direction.
If Sporting does make a decision to move on, it’s not a bad time to do it, as there’s the ability for a major roster overhaul this winter. Currently there are four players set to be out of contract at the end of the season, there are then another fourteen who have options for the 2025 season that a decision would need to be made on. Of those are all three of KC’s current U22 players. KC’s three current DPs (Alan Pulido, Nemanja Radoja, and Daniel Salloi) are all under contract through 2025 at least, but two could be bought down to bring in another DP or two. It would be a chance for a new coach (assuming they’re in place before roster decisions are required) to immediately remake the roster the way that they want.
At some point the decision has to be made to just move on and go in a different direction. And that time certainly appears to have come for Sporting KC and Vermes.
For the longest time I’ve maintained that Vermes’ job was safe as long as the players didn’t quit on him, ala the Seattle Sounders quitting on Sigi Schmid in July of 2016 in KC. I’m still not convinced the team has quit on him.
Would removing Vermes change the direction of the club immediately? Probably not. Will it be painful? Probably. Vermes is so ingrained, so interwoven, within the club from the top down that there will certainly be some pain points in the transition. But it feels like it’s time to just rip the band-aid off to try something new. Will it be better? There’s no guarantee, but it’s time for a change. The results though aren’t there and at some point, blame has to fall on the guy who’s leading the players. I appreciate everything that Vermes has done with this club, but it’s time to move on.
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I’m so torn. Because after this season I firmly believe it’s actually the players. I just don’t think a bad manager is the cause of what’s going on on the field, can a bad manager lose you some crucial games? Yes. Is he the cause of a winless 9 game streak? Mmmmm I’m not so sure. I think talent shines through bad managing at some point. Yes I know vermes picked them. But that’s all the more reason to hire a technical director.
Just my thoughts. Dont burn me for them, I understand the vermes out view. I really do. There is just a part of me that thinks a new tech director and new players fix this problem. Maybe even making vermes ONLY a manager.
That seems to be a fix that would have been arguable a year ago, or maybe 2, but now it seems like it’s too late. It might be worth a try to shake things up, but given the vibes, it needs to be done now, not at the end of the season.
And I totally agree with you that these fixes obviously should have happened before now. But that’s the front office’s fault honestly.
I’m not, he’s the man so he’s responsible.
You’re right for sure he is responsible. But I oddly felt more vermes out last year than I do this year lol. I think our players just suck.
Which is also PV’s responsibility as the Chief Soccer Officer or whatever the official title is. He’s not just the coach. He oversees everything that happens with this team.
And I’d argue it IS the coaching’s role’s problem, because that’s the position that consistently overworks some players and lets others go stale, such that our bench is underdeveloped and our starters are gassed.
You bring up a good point that I didn’t touch on in my comment. I was talking about how what worked 10 years ago doesn’t work now. 10 years ago, you could get away with leaning on a select number of players and not having a deep bench…because every other team was in the same boat. Now, however, you can’t just overwork your starting XI and neglect the bench/reserves, as you state.
Here’s my problem with the “Vermes is SD/CSO and is therefore responsible” angle: he isn’t actually DOING all the jobs. Brian Bliss has been the technical director since 2018. You can draw a line through the winter of 2017/2018 and see a very clear difference in the way the roster has been built. Brian Bliss is doing that work. Peter signs the dotted line at the end, but he goes with what Bliss recommends.
So the question becomes “why does Bliss have a job still?” The answer is “he did decent at his job until COVID”, but it’s been bad since then. And after 3 bad offseasons in a row Peter tried to bring in a new roster guy.
He botched that. 100%. Doesn’t matter if it was Illig force feeding it to Peter or Peter force feeding it to Illig or both guys agreeing that Wilkinson was the guy, Wilkinson was a mistake. But it was the right idea. A person who has proven that they can build a competitive roster on a middling budget in MLS. They thought people would agree with them that Wilkinson deserved a second chance and they didn’t. Failure to read the room, even at that level, isn’t a fireable offense to me.
As for the consistent overwork: Vermes has never been a person who uses a ton of subs, but he DID used to sub more when he was the one building the roster before Bliss took over. Even in 2018 he subbed 2.55 per game (when there were 3 available). It’s gotten worse because he doesn’t trust his depth, and that’s a roster construction thing, which is a Bliss thing, which Vermes tried to rectify with a hiring.
I think it’s a fair point for sure that there is blame to go around. My hang up, though, is that roster building is not just the job of Bliss. I can’t claim to know what the processes look like internally, but I have to imagine it’s a collaborative effort between him and Vermes.
After managing the roster himself for so many years, plus being the person that is actually using the players week in, week out, wouldn’t Vermes have a lot of input on roster construction? I have a hard time believing he is just blindly signing off on whatever Bliss recommends.
My second hang up is that if Vermes was so intent on bringing in a new roster guy, why didn’t Sporting move to fill the position after Wilkinson was ousted? They paid a consulting firm to find candidates for them, then did nothing with those recommendations. Further, why is Bliss still employed if he is really that bad? None of it makes sense to me.
Vermes is the CSO overseeing all soccer operations, and that makes him accountable for all soccer operations. Fair or unfair, that is the responsibility that is assumed when you are head of the organization.
This is the point that needs to be shouted from the rooftops whenever an apologist tries to claim that PV wasn’t really involved in some aspect of team issues.
To look at it another way, PV has a short leash for benching/ghosting players who offend his sense of propriety. We’ve seen it over and over. He needs that standard applied to himself. Right now he’s the Khiry Shelton of the front office.
I think that’s misdirected / redirected apathy and exhaustion.
If Vermes remains the coach, the team needs to get a lot younger next year. I don’t think our roster is bad and I think a different manager could get more from what we have. I don’t think Vermes is a bad coach either, but I don’t think this roster suits his style of coaching.
If it’s Vermes next year, we need youth that can play the high press and outwork opponents. We need to get back to what has made Vermes teams the most successful. We’ve always looked for high work rate guys, but we’ve fallen in love with our veterans and held on to them as their production has dropped.
But to do this, I we really need someone in the position Wilkinson was set to take. And we need to oust Bliss and get a better scouting team.
This is the roster Vermes wanted, and chose. No one he didn’t pick is here. How does a new DoF change that? Wwill Vermes perform at a higher level if the players aren’t the ones he really wants? I think it’s easy to fall back into the Vermes right or wrong mentality, because he has been spectacular for SKC. But he’s been proving that MLS in 2024 is beyond him. He’s failed to put a proper roster together. He’s failed to maximize the talent he does have in this roster. And he appears to be failing (at least compared to other MLS sides) in overseeing the pro player pathway. We should build him a statue. And say goodbye.
Well I guess that’s my thing, hes not out there kicking the ball around. The players are. Good players will still show through bad managing. These players haven’t. Like people above said, this is Bliss’s team. Idk, I just have a tough time putting ALL the blame on him. Johnny and daniel still wont take space with a new manager. It’s not gonna make pulido faster. And it’s not gonna stop Leibold from making bonehead passes, or bassong from not following his man.
So true!!!!
It’s not all the blame. Not even in caps–but whatever percentage of blame you think is the minimum for #vermesout, I guarantee you we’re there. (And I wonder if, aside from “making Pulido faster,” you may be underestimating a new coach’s, or even Vermes’, impact.)
But that’s not the point. Why #vermesout #blissout? Because SKC losing with a new coach is better than losing with Vermes. The team needs something to look forward to as much as the fans.
Not true. This coach is changing formations. Playing players out of position. No one succeeds in that kind of team. They don’t know the overlaps or passing lanes and responsibilities second nature, then it shouldn’t be deployed in a game.
Salloi is only a starter because his dad is besties with PV. Get rid of PV, Salloi is gone. No coach needs a slow winger built like a 12 year old who loses the ball every gd time he touches it. JFR just isn’t in form since the injury, and father time also may be catching him. One has always been good, one had an anomaly year where he scored 17 goals. I’d start Vargas over either one. He’s not only fast and hungry. He can cross! Imagine wingers who can play 20 yard passes near the box. He’ll only get better with time.
Miami added Messi last year. They weren’t mathematically eliminated, yet still missed the playoffs. Add Suarez and other friends of Messi, one loss this year. Team matters in team sports.
If it happens again and again, with player after player, year after year, it’s not the players.
It is past that time by years. He should have never gotten the extension. He should have gone out while he was on time instead of leading our side to more dismal lows. He should retire immediately and let the team start to rebuild.
If he had any honor at all he would retire today. Pack your bags, you are done.
Well said Mike. I agree 100% with your reasons and your sentiments. It is past time and we need to make a clean break. I am fine with bringing in Benny F. as interim coach, let him play the youngsters and see how he does with the squad. I think we will have a bunch of good candidates for technical director once PV is gone from the club.
And if we don’t promote Benny this year, in all likelihood he will leave for another team in the offseason. He almost had other jobs last offseason. PV is reminding me of Arsene Wenger at Arsenal. He stayed beyond his time and it ruined the memories of the good times he had created. PV is doing the same thing right now.
PV is no where close to being in the professor’s league.
PV is no where close to being in the professor’s league.
*Note: I was having an issue with my browser and was working with tech support. Kcwookie and Kcwookie1 are the same person and 1 won’t be used further.
I don’t think David is saying he is in the professor’s league, but the situations are extremely similar. You have 2 coaches, 2 legends at their respective clubs that have brought their clubs success, that have probably overstayed their welcome a bit too long.
I don’t care how we slice it. PV needs to go. After the professor left, Arsenal has seen huge improvements with a solid manager. I’m not an arsenal fan, but I applied them hugely.
I’d love to see Benny promoted and roll the dice and some young & raw talent. It’s the most positive and most feasible thing that could happen if a change is made right now.
Peter needs to go period.
Peter Vermes is part of the old guard of the MLS and frankly, the old guard is going extinct due to archaic methods. At the peak of the Vermes era – early to mid 2010s – the talent level of the MLS was relatively low compared to today. In those times, it was not the cumulative talent of a roster that separated the good teams from the bad. Rather, it was the ability of the coach to create a whole greater than the individual parts. That is something that Vermes has always been gifted at through the use of a very meticulous system and tactical setup.
The problem is, the landscape of the MLS has drastically evolved over the past ten years. The talent level – both in domestic development and recruitment from abroad – is so much higher. And the main problem that I see is that Vermes is unable, and perhaps unwilling, to adapt to this new way. He is still trying to operate the team both on and off the field like he did 10 years ago, but what worked 10 years ago doesn’t work now. It takes more than just a good system and tactics to achieve sustainable success. And it’s debatable that his system is even good at this point.
In the modern MLS, you still need a talented coach, no doubt, but what is even more paramount is to keep up with youth development and improving your talent pool via recruitment. These things must be constantly churning if you want a fresh and competitive roster each season. Unfortunately, Sporting has been extremely behind the curve and I just don’t see that changing as long as Vermes is in charge. It’s so abundantly clear that we need a changing of the guard and someone to modernize the club, and I just really hope that the club leadership sees what is so obvious to us fans.
This is a great essay overall but I do want to make a point I keep harping on about.
In no other season in MLS history would SKC have even made the playoffs. An 8th team beating a 9th team is not overly prideworthy. The STL series was legitimately amazing and will remain one of my favorite fan moments, but it would (arguably should) never have happened without the 2023 playoff dilution. I just have a really hard time with the narrative that SKC had a good playoff run in 2023 and that that somehow makes that year a success.
Totally agree. We qualified for playoffs 8 years in a row from 2011-2018 when it was only the top 5 or 6 teams who made it. Now that’s a heck of a run and I understand you can’t expect that streak to go on indefinitely. But once the format expanded to top 7 in 2019 and now top 9, we’ve missed the playoffs twice under much easier standards, are on track to miss this year, and if not for the change from 7 to 9 last year we would have missed again. If we can’t manage to be a top 18 team, then what are we even doing here?
At the threat of this sounding too mean, I think looking at MLS this is a too old school way of thinking. Sure only 5 or six teams made it 2017. They have also added 5, soon to be six teams.
In the NFL playoffs, home teams win slightly more than half the games, except in the old division round, where home teams won 75% of the games since they were coming off a bye. Do all the chiefs fans think this last super bowl is watered down since Buffalo didn’t get a bye, which significantly reduced their chances of winning?
If you want to make a point that they didn’t “deserve” to make the playoffs based on the past rules, you should also include that the shouldn’t have had Ndembe, cause until just two years ago, there was no U-22 initiative.
The rules are always evolving, and if you reduce accomplishments based on the past, you can make anything sound unimpressive.
All that being said, I agree with the article
Agreed–plus if it were any team other than St. Louis, people would hold in much lower regard.
Couldn’t agree more, Mike. I wrote something similar last year, before the epic run that squeaked SKC into the top 9. /s
I’m not intending to blow my own horn here, but my sentiments are unchanged. The organization is rotten to the core: from Reid to Vermes to Bliss.
The argument could be, “who will we get who’s better?” I’d argue that SKC are already Wooden Spoon contenders and they couldn’t be any worse.
#ReidOut #VermesOut #BlissOut #WeDeserveBetter
“Probably, Vermes is so ingrained, so interwoven, within the club from the top down that there will certainly be some pain points in the transition.”
Exactly why we he — and Bliss — needs to be excised, and those thinking SKC will improve if Vermes ‘could just focus on coaching’ everything would be better, are wrong.
Mike K, I respectfully disagree.
I think the problem is at the top. SKC have basically been without a GM since last season. They reportedly decided this role needed to be offloaded from PV at the end of last season. But they still have not filled the role.
IMHO when Kellyn Acosta chose Chicago Fire over SKC, it was a sign of major issues at SKC. A few on here have commented about inadequate signings and player development, and I think the points are valid. Still there is no sign of urgency from SKC ownership to find a GM.
I think we need to be careful about what we wish for. If SKC fires PV, who do they bring in that will be better. I know the knee jerk reaction is “anybody would be better”. But IMHO, nobody will want the job given the state of the front office. And anybody they brought in would be setup for failure. Even if they could get Benny to take the job, I fear he would just suffer a cruel fate due to the state of the organization.
IMHO our best bet for this season is to get behind the Team that we have, and pressure ownership to hire a world class GM to start the hard work of improving the organization from bottom up.
Here’s the thing with the whole “without a GM” thing. They have a TD, they have Brian Bliss. The problem, and probably part of their problem in getting an actual quality candidate for the sporting director hire, is the fact that the sporting director would still be reporting to PV. At this point PV has so much power within the organization that any “world class” candidate for the sporting director position is going to be turned off by the fact that his reporting to the coach, who in most situations is under the sporting director.
Why does sporting director have to report to PV. Ownership might have to think out of the box.
Because, as quoted above, “Vermes is the CSO overseeing all soccer operations, and that makes him accountable for all soccer operations.”
One of the (many) weird things about the Wilkinson hire was the way that he’d apparently have been working both above AND below Vermes.
“Still there is no sign of urgency from SKC ownership to find a GM.”
Maybe because few people want to work with / under Vermes? Maybe X, Y, Z?
“I think we need to be careful about what we wish for. If SKC fires PV, who do they bring in that will be better.”
Let’s find out. It’s unfair, but SKC is already last, so the bar is not high. Worrying about who will be better is one of the signs you’re #vermesout without knowing it(!)
“I know the knee jerk reaction is “anybody would be better”.
Correct, even with the hyperbole. Because SKC needs change to eliminate the apathy, and not “‘new player’ or ‘wait until they’re not injured’ change.
“But IMHO, nobody will want the job given the state of the front office. And anybody they brought in would be setup for failure.”
Ring the alarm bells. I wonder if you didn’t just talk yourself into #vermesout #blissout, etc (unless you really think Vermes doesn’t make up a part of the front, middle, and back office.)
“IMHO our best bet for this season is to get behind the Team that we have, and pressure ownership to hire a world class GM to start the hard work of improving the organization from bottom up.”
Why are you limiting yourself to just the “best bet for this season.” #vermesout is about this season, the next, and so forth.
Besides, what if the coach / cso is more responsible than you realize?
“Hire a world class GM and improve it from the bottom up.”
Why hasn’t it happened? How long are you willing to wait? Both for the hiring and the time it takes to see the world class effects trickle down.
Mike, I wanted to disagree with your points, but honestly, I just can’t. I want to take this to another place. In soccer, like any professional sport, the manager/coach is most often judged by two bottom lines, sometimes by either or collectively, and that is winning and development. For the last few seasons, Vermes has not done much of either. It is inexcusable to continue to have the oldest roster in the league AND rarely if ever develop young players, whether they are players we sign or those in the academy. PV’s issue with respect to development, is that he expects a player to be a plug-and-play, ready-made guy, for them to get on the field. Meanwhile, he plays, experienced players with limited talent and energy. Just as he mentions players must “deserve to play” those players deserve development, and he does not provide that. He will not loan them out to get more minutes at an equal competition level as MLS and at the same time will not provide them minutes off the bench in the MLS. I understand that every player will not grow into an elite or even good MLS player, but through development and coaching, we should have had more young players become successful under his tutelage. When experience is not giving you wins, you have to show development is happening. The truth is, this is the model for most teams in our context (small market, mid-table budget)—develop players for the first team, and sell those players you can sell. Brighton in the EPL has mastered this at the managerial level and technical director level, why can’t we prove to be the same in the MLS?
I want to end by offering another saying: “adapt or die”. If you are not winning, and not developing talent, your organization is dying. I don’t know about everyone else but I’m ready to adapt, even if that means it’s without Vermes.
Yeah if this were the NFL he would be gone. Look at Belichik
Yea, the lack of seeing growth/development happening is what is making this season insufferable. I recall when we played the kids one season (kuzain, busio, Duke, felipe). We didn’t win all the time, but it was nice seeing the kids grow and develop. These losses are more crushing because we see no future potential or growth. Just regression and pain. Good call.
Well written and completely true. PV has been the only coach I’ve really known, but his time is past. If we continue down this path, we’re goin to turn into the Quakes or the Fire and that is a dismal future to look forward to.
The problem is the ownership and that has been clear since Neal passed. The team has been mismanaged as an organization. Mike Illig needs to go for anything to actually work again.
To the ownership of sporting Kansas City either clean house and produce quality product or watch the number of fans in the stands continue to decrease.
The ownership has created this mess by rewarding mediocrity instead of demanding excellence. Maybe we need a new ownership team?