Sporting Kansas City Scouting Report & MLS Week 11 Wrap: A Parade of Weakness

So, "welcoming spirit" is a thing. 

This post ends with the Sporting Kansas City Scouting Report. For the record, (I swear) I did not do that to drag the reader through the rest of the post; skip to the bottom as the spirit moves you. It had more to do with keeping the past with the past and the future wherever it ends up. Think of it as kicking around what I know before moving on to what I think I know.

The secondary purpose comes with situating the Portland Timbers in the Western Conference before interrogating the good and bad that will come from whatever result they get against SKC. With an eye to feng shui, notes on Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference will come first, followed by notes on the West, followed by the SKC preview. To answer the question no one asked, yes, I did abandon the idea of writing about just three games. What I can I say: restlessness makes me an unreliable narrator. With that, let’s get something out of the way:

Results I Ignored
TFC 1-1 SJ (Toronto’s burning home games on draws (5, 8 of 11 at home); San Jose will be fine)
ATL 3-1 MTL (good for Atlanta, seriously, but Montreal’s bad on the road)
PHI 0-0 NSH (Nashville will be fine; Philly’s fishing around their pants for a Wooden Spoon)
LAG 1-1 VAN (Vancouver will be fine and should stay in Vancouver, goddammit)

Moving on to…

Eastern Conference Notes
Still Nashville’s conference to lose – though I’m seeing rumors about injuries, even beyond Sam Surridge – which make the shifts below them more interesting.

The New England Revolution lead the pack courtesy of a last-gasp penalty rightly awarded for a handball (probably in here) and finished off by a late, late Carles Gil (97th minute) penalty kick. The Revs shook off a shaky start to go 6-2-1 over their last eight games. They played the balance of those (five) at home, where they’re perfect (5-0-0). That run’s a bit of mystery when you look at their current XI, but fuck it. as for Charlotte, they had their chances in the 0-1 loss, but playing the last four games on the road coincided rather directly with their slide down the standings. They have history of struggling on the road, but that shelling in Orlando (1-4, two match days ago) turns the condition chronic.

Speaking Orlando, they had the moment of their 2026 with a 4-3 comeback stunner at Inter Miami CF. Hella low bar, obviously, what with them below (yeessh...) Atlanta, but going down 0-3 with Lionel Messi in full flight inspired Martin Ojeda to a hat trick (best of the bunch, for providing and scoring). Said inspiration got a big assist from Miami’s equal parts high and clueless back line – and, to put it on the record, I don’t trust Maximiliano Falcon. Miami’s collapse and present inability to win at home is the only thing that makes this result noteworthy.

If the middle of the East had half this poise...

Moving the conversation three and five places up the table – but still a mere two points higher – the pavement-dragging face-plant by both New York teams continues to be my personal point of fascination in the MLS East. Red Bull New York and New York City FC didn’t just lose in Week 11, both teams were outclassed on their home grounds, 0-2 final scores be damned (LINK and LINK). Red Bull played a tighter game against FC Dallas, but the visitors put together the best moments, scored one great goal and threw together a Make-a-Wish moment for one of their youngsters; worse, Red Bull got out-shot and failed to register even one shot on goal. Not wanting to be outdone, NYCFC staggered through a shaky first half capped by sleeping through Louis Munteanu’s opener. Everything I reviewed tells me they barely rallied in the second, but nothing stood out like a pervasive sense of uncertainty in their play. As for DC, they rose to fifth on this, their second win in two (a 3-2 scrapper versus Orlando came before), but that’s still just three points ahead of NYCFC. Climbing a greased pole feels like an apt description for the present state of play in the East…

…that said, one once-dormant team has shown signs of life in recent weeks: FC Cincinnati. I don’t want to overstate this, for multiple reasons – chief among them, the fact they had more of their regular roster in leaner times – but Cincy hasn’t lost in five, they rediscovered their fight after some crap results, and now they have a couple wins at their back. Whatever you think of the wins themselves – 3-2 at Chicago this week, 2-0 versus Red Bull the week before – the fact they won it with the second spare-parts backline in a row throws some weight behind the “found their fight” theory. Taking all three out of Chicago took surviving Kyle Smith getting sent off at the 56th minute, plus a couple gaffes by Tah Anunga, but Roman Celentano played a strong one and Evander bagged a hat trick – including the kind of Very Evander goal I haven’t seen in a minute. Chicago, meanwhile, slept through their own launch party. A statement and 2nd in the East pissed away on a late PK…

...Columbus pissed away a win of their own, which feels like a good pivot to…

Western Conference Notes
Minnesota United FC doesn’t have the best road record in MLS (ruined by Miami and San Jose, fwiw), but all four wins in their 4-2-1 came over their past four road games (@ LAG, @ SD, @ FCD, now @ CLB). Hardly a murderers’ row, I get it, but sometimes we don’t give taking care of business its due. Columbus went up by two – kicked off by a classy fucker by Taha Habroune – only to see Minnesota pull both back over the ensuing ten minutes and to swipe all three points in a 3-2 win. Kelvin Yeboah did the yanking (pretty soft goals too), and – who else? – Tony Markanich scored the winner not long after. Minnesota looks like a problem for the Timbers, if a distant one (so far ahead), but slip this into the ever-thickening file about Columbus failing to launch…

I already covered the only East-v-West clash above – Dallas’ (actually slick ) win at Red Bull – but I want to return to them and a concept I've so far struggled to explain. That win at Red Bull lifted Dallas to 2nd in the West, Houston Dynamo FC’s 1-0 win versus Colorado raised them to 8th and just one point behind Dallas. Austin FC – a team that, for the record, I dismissed – climbed to 11th in the West (and a three-point advantage over the Timbers) with a 2-0 win versus (an admittedly struggling) St. Louis. The wins for Austin and Houston carry forward some good things – e.g., a second straight win for Austin, plus Myrto Uzuni putting up DP numbers; three wins in their past four for Houston (all 1-0; god bless, Bennie-ball) – but that win at Red Bull felt like it came from Bizarro-Dallas. By that I mean, that same (or a similar) Dallas team picked up just two points of nine from home games versus St. Louis, the Galaxy and Minnesota. In the same vein, Houston dropped three in a row before the little streak noted above and Austin went winless in seven before their last two wins. These aren’t great teams, in other words, but – and I mean this on levels on the date and time that I type the conclusion to this sentence - they’re all better than the Timbers.

Of course there's a show about the Joneses. And keeping up.

Basically, both Houston and Dallas seem to have the talent to hold their place in the standings and, should any of the teams above them slip, they have a decent chance of stepping over them. The striving middle-class of MLS West, in other words, or the Joneses that the Timbers need to keep up with in 2026, assuming that the front office wants to achieve bare competence. Beats bluffing their way through another transition season with promises of “not fucking around” signings, or whatever stupid shit Merritt Paulson said way back when. Pains me beyond belief to quote Ronald Reagan, but I’m on trust but verify until future notice. Anyway, I’m calling this the Texas Line and live in hope of seeing the Timbers clear it.

To clean up the rest of the West, I won’t like Colorado long-term prospects until they can improve on that 1-5-1 road record (in their defense, they’ve played some (once) tough ones, e.g., Seattle, early season NYCFC and, more recently, Vancouver). As for St. Louis, the team Austin beat…it’s bleak, man. Moving on to the bad news, the Timbers can slip into that same purgatory with just one more trip over their own dicks.

Right. Moving on to the Scouting Report. Let’s see what I can get wrong this week.

Sporting Kansas City Scouting Report
Just the Facts, Ma'am
1-7-2, 5 pts., 10 GP; 8 gf, 26 ga (-18); home 0-3-2, away 1-4-0
Last 10 Results: LDLWLLLLLD
Strength/Location of Schedule
@ SJ (0-3 L); v CLB (2-2 D); v SD (0-1 L); @ LAG (2-1 W); v COL (1-4 L); @ RSL (1-3 L); v SJ (1-3 L); @ VAN (0-3 L); @ CHI (0-5 L); v SEA (1-1 D)

Do this. Don't do this. [SEND HELP!]

This is not a good team. I’ve seen them called the worst in MLS history, but 1) I haven’t seen the math, and 2) don't think we have all pieces of the equation yet. Still, two numbers in the above should jump out a little further than the rest – the goals scored (8) and goals allowed (ouch, but also 26). Even there, the problem with scoring pales against the late avalanche of goals allowed: SKC watched 18 of those 26 goals go in over the past six games. I’ll get back to that, but I want to start this with last week’s 1-1 draw versus the Seattle Sounders.

Now, if you just watch the highlights, you’ll walk away feeling like SKC did all right. Running that visual against the stats actually hurts them a bit, first, because you see Seattle’s 27 shots (9 on goal), second when you think back to how many of SKC’s shots came from too far out and with too little on them. Based on the 55+ minutes of the game that I watched live, I wouldn’t quite call the draw “lucky.” Seattle created good chances and fired better, smarter, faster shots, but the result turned on their failure to break through as much as anything. Not to linger overly on a result that could pass quickly as the sun breaking through the clouds on a blustery day, but I want to drive home the point that Kansas City can frustrate a team just fine – which would suck all the joy out of Stumptown. Now, getting back to the myriad ways SKC fucks up…

Because I couldn’t find highlights of SKC playing a team that plays at Portland’s level and in their unique…style (sorry, threw up in my mouth a little), I went with watching film shorts of their 1-4 loss versus Colorado (some weeks ago) and the 5-0 rout at Chicago two weeks ago. The main thing that stood out: like your preferred brand of tissue, SKC has three layers of soft on defense:

1) they have a terrible habit of leaving players wide open at the back post; related

2) so, so much ball-watching, to the point where you think that’s what they do in practice; and

3) what’s the opposite of stuck-in?

At least three of the goals they gave up against Colorado were crap, an agonizing combination of late and stupid, but the Fire’s second goal showed SKC’s defense at peak softness. Multiple defenders played that entire sequence with the energy of people wilting through a TED talk; no attempts at a tackle, not even a lunge; no one even thought to foul. Incredible for its rarity, really.

Moving on to mechanics, it looked like SKC pressed pretty hard versus Colorado, but that they’ve opted for something safer lately; Warren Barton (color commentary for the Seattle draw, basically implied opening up would be suicide). They haven’t totally given up on pressing – between sound and vision, that lead to their goal versus Seattle – but, for most of the time I watched them play live, SKC dropped into a shape and bristled out of it. Denying time to any attacking player in their defensive third feels like a good description. Both Colorado and Chicago revealed their vulnerability in transition (what’s Jacob Bartlett doing here?), but I wouldn’t expect them to allow much space to open for Portland on Saturday.

As for the attacking side, it’s mostly finding Joveljic, pushing Shapi Suleymanov up the left, and finding newcomer Capita Capemba up the right. In the current preferred 4-3-3 shape, it’s not so different from Portland’s current approach; to put a sharp spin on it, I’d call SKC a better version of the Timbers mechanically, just with worse players, Joveljic excepted.

To run through the personnel real quick, Bartlow gives solid, not spectacular MLS center back vibes, while the rest of the defense (think you get their best back four in the link immediately above) feels like a work in progress. Turning to midfield, the broadcast blew a lot of hype Lasse Berg Johnsen’s way in his debut for a player who has turned out to be invisible (in ways likely both good and bad), but he does have a resume; their best ball-progression player is probably Manu Garcia, but I heard something about him getting pulled too far back to get things going to keep things going up front; also, Jacob Bartlett (I kid, he’s…fine). Tidying up with the front three, Suleymanov was active and decently effective versus Seattle, comes in from the left, shoots sometimes, so Cole Bassett and Jose Caicedo will need to track that, and he kicks a good corner and can hit a freekick. Apart from being a good finisher, Joveljic receives the ball and turns as well as any forward in MLS, but he won’t body a defender, but will instead pull him out, turn and play a ball into the space behind him. That player should be Capemba, but Calvin Harris stretches the field just fine and, after a little poking around, I saw Capemba doesn’t have a massive history as a game-changer, or much history at all. One final note: Barton talked about new 'keeper Stefan Cleveland settling the team, implying along the way that John Pulskamp does not. Getting back to resumes... 

So, what do the Timbers do with all of the above? I'd start by going at them, maybe even attempting passing patterns that no Portland lineup has tried this season - playing through a defense (GASP!). I know David Da Costa prefers drifting out left, but maybe now's the game to cheat Bassett higher, both positionally and with runs, to see if you can't fluster SKC. If nothing else, that might open more space for Plan A, getting Brandon Bye high on the right for a cross to (something else to work in; having attacking players crash the box). More than anything else, Portland should gamble on the fact that SKC hasn't scored more than one goal in a game since Week 4 (think it was actually Week 5) and, with the explicit goal of becoming the sixth team in seven weeks to drop two or more goals on SKC, throw caution to the wind. Play as if Phil's job depends on it. Or don't. I don't think the fans would care.