Not Very Sporting (Kansas City)

I think I have a problem.

I, like almost everyone else on the planet, really like good soccer. The kind of soccer than makes you scream OOOH! when something remarkable happens. I'm a big fan of saying "GOOD BALL" when a pass is made that cuts out lines, switches the field, or put a player in on goal (I love that one so much I used it as the name of an LLC I started last year.)

But as enjoyable as it is to watch good soccer, I think I'm just as intrigued by stories of things going wrong for a team beyond the micro view of one game. I don't wish for sporting directors, GMs, coaches, etc. to lose their jobs but I can't help by think and talk and write about the immense tension that swirls around those decision-makers whose positions are on the line when results are bad and there's no clear answers in the offing. When we're talking about Major League Soccer, the unique conditions imposed on clubs by league rules, American soccer culture, local fan pressure, etc. makes for fascinating drama.

Trying to figure out why things go bad and what events lead to failure is part of the fun.

MLS never fails to deliver on this front, even without the specter of relegation hanging over bad teams as it does in other places. It's not even April and we've already had two managers fired (and a third peace out). Time will tell if Oscar Pareja and Marco Donadel deserved the sack, but the for moment I have no problem saying that those moves made the early part of the 2026 season more interesting.

Then there's Sporting Kansas City. As Matt Doyle outlined in his newsletter this week, SKC is shaping up to be one of the worst MLS teams of all time. A janky roster populated by inexperienced players hasn't worked out how to reach "merely competent" one quarter of the way through the season. Roster reinforcements can't possibly arrive until the summer and while the timing of the World Cup break means there will be more games for new players to impact than in a typical MLS season, a chance at making something out of the campaign may be lost by then.

Sporting has a first year GM in former NYCFC man David Lee and a first year head coach in former Chicago Fire boss Raphaël Wicky. That's two guys to replace the man that was the institution in Kansas City for 16 years, Peter Vermes. Although Vermes stepped back from the GM role towards the end of his run with Sporting, there was never really any doubt about who made all of the important decisions for the club.

I can't say that SKC should have kept Vermes in place, no matter the disaster 2026 is turning out to be (moving on from Vermes was going to have to happen eventually), but it's worth asking if the transition to a new organizational structure needed to be this difficult. A facile reading of Lee's resume makes him a reasonable hire to be the architect of SKC in the new era; the problem is that it's hard to project his talents into a truly independent team after his years working in the City Football Group environment.

How much of NYCFC's success was down to Lee and how much flowed from resources he won't have in Kansas City? Were some of the more recent issues with NYCFC's roster (missing on players like Talles Magno, being unable to replace Maxi Morales) Lee's fault or were they, again, functions of CFC handcuffs?

I'm not going to be too harsh on Lee for hiring Wicky, mostly because I'm not sure how attractive Sporting looked to coaching candidates and because Wicky did achieve things at Young Boys in Switzerland in his last job. Coaching is a smaller part of the poor start to the season than a roster overhaul that left the team without a full roster when the 2026 campaign began.

This portion of Wicky's comments on playing young players after this weekend's 3-0 hammering by Vancouver is telling.

That's a part I like, but I don't think right now we're in the best place because I always believe that when you put in one or two young players, they should be surrounded by something which works. And right now, it is not the case because of various reasons, so it's not easy for them to be on the field because obviously the team is not complete yet. Then we had all these injuries and we always have to change and then you have to put young players in. That is not always easy.

The really interesting wrinkle in the story of Sporting's collapse into oblivion on the field is the ownership situation. Back in January Peter Mallouk, a local with an interest in the Kansas City Royals and a minority share of SKC, became the club's majority owner. While an ownership change would typically mean the new boss putting his or her stamp on the club's operations in a direct way, Mallouk's purchase came with the caveat that the the Illigs, the club's previous majority owners and the people most responsible for everything that makes Sporting Kansas City Sporting Kansas City (the name, the stadium, the hire of Vermes back in the late aughts) would retain operational control of the club.

This is from Sam McDowell's reporting on Mallouk's purchase back in January.

“We can confirm that there have been no changes in the management of the club, and no changes in the club’s ownership participation in MLS governance or league activities,” Sporting KC’s statement read. “The Illig family continues to lead the club’s shareholder group, manage the club day to day, and represent Sporting Kansas City on the MLS Board of Governors.”

One can't help but wonder, with Sporting plumbing new depths of incompetence and attendance dipping (just ahead of the World Cup coming to town), if Mallouk might decide the change the arrangement.

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