Sporting Kansas City vs Los Angeles Galaxy

When: Saturday, June 29 at 7:30 p.m.
Where: Children’s Mercy Park
How to Watch: MLS Season Pass

Head-to-Head:

Record
SKC: 3W-12L-5D
ATX: 7W-7L-6D

Last Result
SKC: 4-0 Loss at Columbus Crew
ATX: 1-0 Win at Minnesota United

PREVIEW:

In the midst of all the international tournaments this summer, Sporting Kansas City continue the MLS regular season in hopes of getting out of yet another stretch of poor performances, this time hosting Austin FC, who currently sit 8th in the Western Conference.

Since breaking a 10-game winless streak against the Seattle Sounders on June 8, Sporting KC have lost three in a row allowing 4 goals in each of those games, including a 4-0 shutout against defending MLS Cup champions Columbus Crew.

Being fair, SKC face a gauntlet during that stretch. Before travel to face the aforementioned Crew, Kansas City hosted Real Salt Lake and traveled to Dignity Sports Park to face the LA Galaxy. Three teams that currently sit in playoff position and are hopeful of making a deep run in the playoffs.

On another positive note, taking out the shutout in Columbus, SKC scored 3 against RSL and 2 against the Galaxy. The issue now seems to be the porous defense that is taking the team out of games.

Austin have gone through a rough patch themselves. Since defeating Sporting in the last meeting on May 18, Los Verdes have gone 1W-3L-2D, with the lone victory coming in their last match day thanks to a goal from former SKC forward Diego Rubio. The defense allowed 11 goals during that stretch and offensively, the team only found the back of the net 4 times.

Austin will be without defender Julio Cascante and midfielder Daniel Pereira who are representing Costa Rica and Venezuela, respectively, at the CONMEBOL Copa America.

SKC has struggled against the Verde and Black squad coached by former Kansas City Wizard Josh Wolff. Austin have beaten SKC in 5 of the last 6 meetings.

For Kansas City, this will be their first match since parting ways with Technical Director and Vice President of Player Personnel Brian Bliss. While calls for change have echoed from fans inside CMP and on social media platforms, it’s hard to imagine that Bliss’ departure will make an immediate impact on the field, rather than being part of a long-term plan.

Remi Walter, Alan Pulido and Kayden Pierre were full participants in Thursday’s training session, per Daniel Sperry. Daniel Salloi did some work with the ball ahead of the match, but will likely be questionable as he continues to recover from the lower leg injury.

Having played one more game than San Jose at the time of this writing, SKC sit just 3 points ahead of the Earthquakes at the bottom of the overall league standings. Conversely, SKC is 11 points out from a playoff spot.

Points will be hard to find for the club who will play 7 games in 22 days, including a Thursday midweek match on Fourth of July against the Colorado Rapids followed by a matchup with FC Dallas 3 days later on Sunday, July 7. Then another matchup with FC Dallas on July 10 in the US Open Cup quarter finals.

It feels as though this sentiment has come up every week this season, but if SKC don’t start putting together better performances and earning results in these games, the noise will continue to get louder and the fan base will continue to call for change.

Austin is just the start of the busy schedule and it’s important to star off on the right foot with a win. A draw is better than a loss, but SKC faithful have only seen two regular season wins at Children’s Mercy Park this season. Give them a reason to stay for the post-match fireworks.