Sporting KC’s Awful Weekend: A Race to the Bottom

For the Glory KC is back with the 148th episode of the show!

Sporting Kansas City put up one of the worst performances in recent memory when they went on the road and lost 4-1 to the LA Galaxy. The dead-last-in-all-of-MLS Galaxy. They gave up a hattrick in the first half to Designated Player, Joseph Paintsil, and he frankly could have scored four or five goals on the night. It’s a worrying trend with how they start games and how they end the first half of games.

Some stats:

Paintsil's first goal was the 13th goal in first 15 minutes that Sporting has given up this year. Worst mark in the league in opening 15.

Paintsil's second was the 18th conceded in the closing 15 minutes of the first half.

Also a league worst mark. #SportingKC

— Daniel Sperry (@sperrydaniel94) September 28, 2025

Despite it being bad, and it was very bad, it wasn’t all bad. Dejan Joveljic scored again, this time against his former team leaving him 4th in the Golden Boot standings. There were positive moments for new starters Memo Rodriguez and Stephen Afrifa (and bad ones but let us have this). Robert Voloder came off the bench and made his case to still be on this roster.

Sheena and I also discuss all the follies and how much of the blame should be heaped onto John Pulskamp (spoiler: not much in my eyes). And we have to discuss that Shapi Suleymanov red card.

Unfortunately, we also have to update the “race to the bottom” by Sporting KC. They are dangerously closer to ‘winning’ the Wooden Spoon for the first time in club history. The only hope may be that other teams also play bad, which D.C. United and St. Louis City did their part this weekend.

In the SKC Round-up we also cover how much General Allocation Money the new Chief Soccer Officer (CSO) is going to have to work with and some good and bad moments from the final SKC II home game.

The KC Current lifted us up a bit on Friday though, with their dominant 4-1 win with a heavily rotated lineup. There were brilliant moments, debuts, firsts and more. And we have to talk about how Temwa Chawinga was placed ridiculously low on the Ballon d’Or voting.

In the Digital Crawl, we hit on a few more topics, including:

• Chicago Fire’s new Stadium being approved
• A further expanded World Cup in 2030
• Desi Scott set to retire (again)

Here is a rundown of topics and start times:

• Sporting KC get embarrassed against the Galaxy – 9:39
• SKC Wooden Spoon Update – 40:23
• KC Current reverses the SKC score for another win – 50:46
• Digital Crawl – 1:09:59

Upcoming Games

• USMNT U-20s vs. New Caledonia, Mon. Sept. 29th at 6:00PM CDT
• USMNT U-20s vs. France, Thur., Oct 2nd at 3:00PM
• Sporting KC @ Minnesota United, Sat. Oct 4th at 7:30PM 
• SKC II @ MNUFC2, Sun. Oct 5th at 3:00PM
• USMNT U-20s vs. South Africa, Sun. Oct 5th at 3:00PM
• KC Current @ Angel City FC, Mon. Oct 6th at 9:30PM

As a special gift to For the Glory KC listeners and KC Soccer Journal readers, Backheeled dot com is giving away 30 days of their amazing, independent American soccer coverage for free. If you decide you want to turn that into a paid membership, they’ll give you 10 percent off too. Just follow this link!

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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