Level Set 2, Sporting Kansas City: 2025 & History, A Legend/System Falls

Ride the rainbow.

What follows is a brief history of Sporting Kansas City, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

Thumbnail History
I’ll always quietly love them for coming into the league as the Kansas City Wiz and with a rainbow motif on most of their early kits. The fact they thought switching “Wiz” to “Wizards” made it better? Chef’s fucking kiss. The team itself, however, has never been particularly lovable. Preki, one of MLS’s first, great attacking players, lined up for them over their early seasons (and caught the eye of U.S. Soccer doing so), but most of SKC’s most famous players are defenders – e.g., Nick Garcia, Richard Gough (briefly, I think), Matter Besler, Ike Opara, Jimmy Conrad (fungi) – defensive midfielders – e.g., Matt McKeon, Diego Gutierrez, or, quite possibly “the most SKC player” ever, Roger Espinoza – or goalkeepers, e.g., e.g., Tony Meola, Jimmy “White Panther” Nielsen, and Tim Melia. They’ve had some fun teams – think the 2021 team when both Daniel Salloi and Johnny Russell had banner seasons, or the Benny Feilhaber years (2013-2017, effectively) with Krisztian Nemeth, peak Dom Dwyer, and Claudio Bieler running in front of him, and SKC Eternal Graham Zusi pitching in from the wide spaces. Those teams had some successes – MLS Cup in 2013, a cold fucker played on the U.S. equivalent of the Russian steppes, but mostly U.S. Open Cups – and, despite the fact they scored more goals in my head than they did on the field, those teams still represent the beginning of a time when this team finally put some effort into entertaining. Still, I have never stopped thinking of them as the team that rode Meola and an 11th-minute goal by a Danish forward on a professional pit-stop (Miklos Molnar) to victory in one of the dullest MLS Cups ever played (2000). While I wouldn’t quite say their best days are behind them, the trophies have gotten smaller since their 2013 MLS Cup, and then stopped coming altogether after 2017. To be clear, that doesn’t represent some kind of radical drop-off – SKC has made the “real playoffs”(i.e., the quarterfinals or better) in five of the past eight seasons – they’re just not winning anything…and most of those playoff experiences stalled at the quarterfinals. And yet, that combined record raises them to sixth-best all-time team on the Joy Points Scale. I suspect most long-time fans of MLS associate them with seemingly eternal head coach Peter Vermes’ aggressive, grinding approach to the game, but that doesn’t hold up as well as it used to. And that could be what’s going wrong. Or was going wrong…

2025, Briefly
After ten lifetimes in charge (he was made head coach in 2010), a 0-5-1 start to 2025 finally moved Sporting KC to part ways with Vermes. With respect to a coach and a player with some real accomplishments on his resume, it took far longer than it should have for them to notice the moldering staleness of his system. Equally eternal assistant, Kerry Zavagnin, assumed the “interim” mantle and, between the pair of short runs he put together in the first half of the season, if against teams later proved wanting (e.g., St. Louis, San Jose, and LA) and the overall dire state of competition in the nethers of the Western Conference, he kept them in the playoff conversation until early July. Whatever hope SKC fans held in their long-suffering hearts evaporated over the second half of the season: SKC (can this be right?) picked up just one win over the Back 17 of 2025. The Wooden Spoon whistled over, past and around them to the end…

This was on someone's professional website.

Long-Term Tendencies v Recent Trends
Goals For: Average to Under; Goals Allowed: Average to Under
SKC generally sticks at average or under it in terms of goals scored (19 of 30 seasons) and generally gets at average or under on goals allowed (18 of 30 seasons). Recent aberrations aside (e.g., 2018, 2020, and especially 2021), SKC rarely fields free-scoring teams. Their system has generally relied on stacked ‘n’ stubborn defenses and combative midfields, but it only thrived when they assembled an attacking unit capable of turning just enough the draws they've been built to deliver into wins to get them into the playoffs with a stiff enough breeze at their backs; that’s probably a fair description of their 2013 MLS-Cup-winning season, in fact. That long-term pattern has more or less collapsed over the past four seasons (SKC made the 2023 playoffs, if at a limp), which have seen the defense go from shaky to concerning to “is there a doctor in the house? (Any veterinarians? We’re open to veterinarians.)” Things have been bad for a while, basically, and on both sides of the ball. A Western Conference title in a freak season (2020) can’t begin to paper over that kind of failure, so SKC fans have a right to any feelings of panic, dismay or disgust they may be experiencing.

Players I Still Like/Additions So Far
They signed Dejan Joveljic to do a job and he delivered. With the exception of Manu Garcia, who chipped in strong assist numbers (9), and some arguments on the margins (e.g., the gently-erratic Daniel Salloi), he did it alone. I wouldn’t go half as far as calling everything around those two, three players trash, but the parts/whole equation clearly needs some kind of overhaul. Management has so far responded by declining options and allowing contracts to lapse, particularly at the No. 6/No. 8 and across the defense (the list: Joaquin Fernandez (loan, fwiw), Tim Liebold, Alan Montes (also a loan), Logan Ndendbe, Nemanja Radoja, and Robert Voloder). I’m not sure I would have gone so far, stripping things down to the studs doesn’t always pay off, rebuilds don’t always stand up, etc., but that’s just quibbling about numbers against signals both loud and clear that things have to change.

Historical Success (/Hysterical Failure)
Total Joy Points: 36

How They Earned Them
Supporters’ Shield: 2000
MLS Cup: 2000, 2013
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2004
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 1996, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2018
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 1997, 2001, 2002, 2008, 2012, 2020, 2021, 2023
CCL Semifinals: 2019
CCL Quarterfinals: 2014
U.S. Open Cup: 2004, 2012, 2015, 2017
U.S. Open Cup Runner-Up: 2024