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Vermes says Sporting KC need a change in mentality
The club’s issues go beyond the players’ mentality.
Sporting KC were shutout 3-0 in the final home game of the season to an opponent the players and coach admitted is a better team. After the match, Peter Vermes was asked what needs to change and he pointed to the group’s mentality.
Mentality. Mentality. The mentality has to change within the group. – Peter Vermes
He did elaborate after another question and he said the team is lacking confidence and intensity. That is hard to deny after that last performance at CMP in 2024. But the problems go far beyond the players’ mentality.
The entire organization needs a mentality change. From top to bottom.
Vermes also admitted LAFC are a “better team”. Johnny Russell agreed and Tim Melia quickly added “100% facts”. But it isn’t only LAFC who make that fact feel so obvious. Most of the teams near the top of the table have much more quality – financial investment – on their rosters.
Out of the playoffs with just one game to play this season, Vermes promised this would all change next year.
I’m being honest. I would say some of that is because they know we’re out of the playoffs and it’s not there. But I can tell you this, that will not be the case next season.
This week on Shades of Blue, the show discusses everywhere Sporting KC need a change in mentality. Plus, we tell you which players we think have played their last match at Children’s Mercy Park.
JFR… could it really be?
Also, the KC Current secured a home playoff match and are still within reach of homefield advantage throughout the entire playoffs.
Please subscribe, rate, & review the KC Soccer Journal feed wherever you get your podcasts! Feel free to yell at Cody @ThatCodyTho, Thad @TheBackpost, and Robert @SpKCLife.
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What a joke. On so many levels.
m.e.n.t.a.l.i.t.y. That’s a funny way to spell leadership. Or maybe it spells coaching.
If by “mentality change” he means getting smarter and better players in the XI, then I agree
Usually I go hard at PV for these comments. What’s the point? Who is the one person who sets the mentality of a team? He had a tough mental team handed to him. He won a cup and dismantled the team or rode the bad parts until they didn’t work anymore. Made Besler retire like it’s his fault the defense was in shambles while keeping Zusi until he needs a mobile cart to shop Walmart. 11 years later, here we are.
We need to be realistic. We won the US open cup so many times because most MLS teams play the kids. PV puts out starting 11 against USL teams, even years ago. We make the final only playing one mls team. Two wins and we get hardware. Can’t even pull that off. Have to watch former players PV ran off lift it in our face.
As a Missouri resident, I’m running out of reasons to support this team. It’s not entertaining to be in the bottom of the league. I take my money out of state to support the team. I’ll never be a STL fan. I’ll just watch less mls, and more la liga.
Sad this is where the team I love is. PV has literally become the emperor of SKC. He is now openly complaining about situations he causes and is solely responsible for. He should resign. He’s in the media talking about the team in a negative light that he installed. He shipped Opara out for the same nonsense.
JFR hopefully leaves on his own. I don’t know why the guy would try one more year here. He can’t get down the wing and that’s what he does. His one on one evaporated this season. Love him, wish we had put more talent around him.
You guys won’t see any post from me if Salloi is retained. I can’t stand to watch that lady boy attempt to play pro soccer anymore. He’s absolute trash. I think Ndembe was our only lb fast enough to cover up how awful Salloi is. When he’s turning that ball over in dumb spots, Leibold couldn’t get back fast enough.
”lady boy”… really? You can make your point without being misogynistic.
That’s the beauty of free speech. I view you taking offense to that as a feminist view. What business does a woman have commenting on what a man says about another man? Nothing. My words, my choice.
Come on now… this is literally a message board. The whole point is discussion. When you make a post, it’s literally anyone & everyone’s business to reply.
That’s how comments work. If you share an opinion, people tell you what they think of that opinion.
In the same way your words are your choice… any reply to it is that person’s words, and their choice. No less than yours.
The same goes for those downvotes, too.
I posted about the team. Kat singles out one phrase and puts a label on me. I wasn’t going at her. I was going at a player I don’t like. She made it personal for some reason.
14 downvotes out of how many skc fans? I’ll take it. Just means I was attacked by Kat and her supporters, all 14 of them.
My original comments were about the team. It wasn’t vulgar or obscene. Just not your brand of satire. Just don’t reply to my comment to name call me. My comment about a player, hers about me.
There are facts that back up misogynistic views. Occupation of the richest 10 females in the world? Divorce. #facts satire but true.
You aren’t proving the points you think you are. If you resort to statements like this to make your point then I suggest better articulation. Enjoy the anonymity of the internet to spew such unnecessary beliefs.
Honestly, Kat got to it before anyone else did. Don’t blame her for your poor choices. Just do better as a person to represent the club/fandom/KC/men.
why are you still here, you made it clear that the team is doing things that were going to make you go away. I attacked you just as hard as Kat, probably harder, but you singled her out because she is a woman. there are plenty of places on the internet that want unenlightened views like yours, why do you go to those places.
When it comes to your stupid comment about the richest woman, you aren’t proving you are right, you are proving that women have been being oppressed for generations. Using women in a derogatory manner has an effect, and I will not let it go.
You really don’t know what satire means, do you? Or facts, I guess.
Your phrase was objectionable, which is why people responded to it on a public forum. You can feel however you want about it I guess, but it wasn’t Kat who made this personal.
Asking someone to not use derogatory, derisive language to make a point is not an attack. It is a reasonable call for civil discourse.
ETA: thank you to all my “supporters”! J/K, but seriously thank you for sticking up for women and working to keep this a forum that is comfortable for everyone to participate in!
Come on, man. We can do better than this knuckle-dragging nonsense.
This right here is why people avoid comments sections and forums.
If it means you never come back, I hope Salloi is retained forever.
Well, I wouldn’t go that far…
By that logic what business does a comment board dude have commenting on an MLS player about soccer? Or a misogynist have commenting on feminism?
In reality, its really nice to have other viewpoints, especially a women’s view on men. Which isn’t even what happened here, because it was a big SKC fan’s view on SKC.
Yes, I’m super frustrated with SKC. PV is not a good coach and is sleeping in the exact bed that he made. As per PV SOP, he refuses to accept any responsibility. Sad…dude has done nothing to earn a single dollar back from me. I’ll be keeping my soccer funds in my wallet.
GV dude, please keep the degrading comments toward women out of your discussion. You make great points but lose points by saying that about Salloi. Can we just say that Salloi isn’t good enough at soccer to justify a 1.3 million dollar salary or a starting winger spot on the roster?
He was the technical director before he was coach. He didn’t have a tough mental team handed to him, he BUILT a tough mentality team. And he didn’t dismantle that team, time and the desire to play in Europe for guys like Uri and Roger Espinoza and Kei Kamara dismantled it. And he rebuilt that team into a thing that was one freak Sebastian Blanco golazo away from going to MLS Cup in 2018. Then he rebuilt THAT team to get 1st and 3rd in the West. Then yes, his next rebuild failed. He also happened to have a new guy in the room for those post 2018 rebuilds: Brian Bliss. A guy who’s primary jobs were identifying players and negotiating with players. Maybe Peter doesn’t know how to build a good roster in the modern version of MLS, but we’ll soon find out.
As for the USOC stuff, all but 2 teams who have won USOC since 2011 (that’s as far back as I felt like looking) did so by beating 2 or less MLS teams. SKC wasn’t unique in that. Yes, they took it more seriously than the other teams in the earlier rounds but they still had to play first team 11s in every final and they have gone 3 and 1 in them. Pretty good. And Vermes didn’t run anybody off to LAFC. Ilie wanted DP money, we didn’t have a DP slot and MLS rules that season didn’t allow them to use TAM on a re-signing unless they signed a DP and again, they didn’t have a DP slot. MLS dumb roster rules ran Ilie off. Peter didn’t run Kamara off. Kamara went to live his dream and play in the Championship. He also didn’t ship Opara off. Opara’s agent went to the media less than a week after the season ended and said he wanted to be traded if he couldn’t get an immediate pay raise, after he’d just gotten a pay raise 6 months earlier. And they still tried to make it work for another 2 months before they had to trade him. And he played one more season before he retired forever so we would’ve been in the same situation in 2020 no matter what.
There’s a lot to dislike about Vermes. He doesn’t develop most youth well, he plays favorites with head-scratching guys, he couldn’t find a way to pull the best out of this group of guys enough to compete, he’s a buck-passer of blame, he sucks at hiring technical staff, and he refuses to hire new coaches to name a few. But most of this is just nonsense. Then throwing “ladyboy” in there while complaining about them losing you as a fan. Good riddance.
“You guys won’t see any post from me if Salloi is retained”
Great!!!! he is signed for next year already, so we can plan on not seeing you make sexist comments for at least that long. good riddance.
While, yes, roster construction was his responsibility as Sporting Director, he’s not wrong in this assessment. The biggest problems this season were that nobody in the back 5 could defend and that as soon as one thing went wrong at least 9 out of 11 dudes on the pitch immediately gave up. Every single time. We gave up more goals within 5 minutes of each other than any team in the league and had to be close to a record for dropped points from a winning position. The players from 2022 until today HAVE been mentally fragile. They HAVE been quitters. Yes, they are of limited quality in a lot of places as well, but they do not have the effort to make up for the lack of quality.
I also think it’s worth noting that while Vermes is the sole person responsible for coaching he was not the sole person responsible for roster building. He doesn’t scout. He doesn’t negotiate. He doesn’t set the budget. He identified positions of need and told his scouts what to look for and what leagues to look in based on the budget ownership gave him and then the scouts actually identified the players and sent them to Bliss who worked with Vermes to narrow it down and then Bliss negotiated. Everyone in that equation other than Vermes has been either replaced or supplemented with more guys.
Point is this team might still be able to compete with Vermes as manager if Burns is any good at roster building. For the vast majority of his time in New England they were quite good, they just couldn’t get over the hump and win the big one which lead to a coaching carousel which never works in MLS which lead to Bruce Arena being hired to do everything. Burns wasn’t let go because he sucked, he was let go so they could get Bruce.
The point is this: all is not lost because Peter is still around. His continued existence doesn’t necessarily damn them to eternal mediocrity. It’s not futile to think they can be good again, and soon, just because he’s still around.
While I know sports media has conditioned us to remove nuance and reason from sports arguments, I think it is important to remember that the pandemic came at a particularly bad time for this team and it’s moving the roster forward. They brought in their 2 new dp’s at the beginning of 2020, then got shut down. The 2021 off-season should have been about building around those two new players, but instead, things were barely opening back up.
While I think much of Peter’s “it’s hard to get people to come to kc” is overblown, I think the sales pitch at that time in the world would be even more difficult. “I know you haven’t been able to leave your house or see your family for 9 months, but why not give a new city you have never heard of, in a whole new county a try.”
I think this lead to several resignings and lack of options that wouldn’t have existed under normal circumstances. Add to that that the owners made their money as financial investors, which was heavily depressed at that time, and you have a perfect storm of just sign who is avaliable. There are several reports that ownership is changing how they are allocating money to the technical staff, let’s see how that goes before we burn everything to the ground.
BTW, I know there are way worse problems caused by the pandemic. I just believe it played a factor in the bad place sporting is in right now
Doesn’t seem to have slowed fellow obscure inland cities like Columbus or Cincinnati one bit. And teams like that haven’t all but deliberately pissed off their fan bases with obtuse treatment that goes back years.
I agree to some extent, but there is a difference that I feel like you are ignoring, and that is when the dp’s were brought in. I’m going from memory, but I think Cincinnati brought in Acosta before the 2022 season, and Columbus brought in their two attacking dp’s in the last 18 months.
As far as the passing off fans part, I agree with you. as a fairly new season ticket holder, there have been multiple times i have felt like they went out of their way to piss me off
maybe that’s a kind way the players have to say that they don’t wanna play for him?
I appreciate your thoughtful, original thought…oh wait, you’ve said you hate vermes about 60 times on here already.
New manager new mentality. Vermes is the anchor keeping us down. For me he has no redeeming value.