Where Do We Go From Here?
SKC vs Houston Dynamo Postscript / Entry #4 of the 2024 Sporting Sauce Diaries
My eyes on Saturday night were drawn again and again to Memo Rodriguez in central midfield. I knew beforehand that this was a significant match for him, as it always is when one encounters their old team. I don't know the precise circumstances that led to his release by the Dynamo at the end of the 2022 season, but it's easy to intuit how getting cut loose by a team with whom one spent over a decade of his life leads a man to seek vindication. He also came out with a bleach-blond haircut, which was difficult to ignore.
Memo was really going for it. He fought to win duels, went aggressively into tackles, and took chances on goal that he hasn’t frequently taken to this point. Though his effort was at points overzealous and error-prone, it was a sincere effort. I found it endearing in contrast with the rest of the SKC performance, which, to put it bluntly, lacked the juice.
This was disappointing to see, especially against Houston. This is the Dynamo — The team that knocked us out of the playoffs last season, the team that has knocked us out of the playoffs five times in the club's history. The Dynamo are a barometer for Sporting Kansas City, a rival for whom antipathy has been built off of a history of shortcomings. I think it matters to me to see Sporting KC beat the Dynamo in the same way that it matters for the USMNT to beat Mexico, or Kansas to beat Kansas State in college football. It is so frustrating that this team, in a rivalry matchup like this, can come out so flat and unmotivated, but that's how it felt from my vantage point throughout the match.
I admit that I'm a maximalist when it comes to this team’s rivalries, but I feel it sincerely. There are four teams that get my blood running hot due to proximity or history or some combination of the two. Sporting played all of them in the last four matches, didn't win in any of those matches, and came out looking especially uninspiring in the last two. These are the matches in which a team is supposed to come out and play with more intensity — the new rival from across the other side of Missouri, the new-ish rival within the region that we play all the time, the old-ish rival that with whom we’ve engaged in a series of gutsy rock fights since meeting in the final a decade ago, and the old rival who always seems to have our number — and I just haven’t seen it.
And so, here we are, for the third year in a row, in the midst of a disappointing start, and this year, I struggle to see how things gets better. Granted, I didn't see how things could get better last year, and they turned around, but I feel this way nonetheless.
There is still time for the season to turn around (especially in this shambling wreck of a conference) but the catalyst for a turnaround will be more complex than last year’s. For as much as fans (myself included) bemoaned it as an excuse during the early part of 2023, getting our three highest paid players (Pulido, Kinda, Radoja) back from injuries was significant for turning the team’s fortunes around. There are again injuries this year, but they’re not as widespread and devastatingly long-term as last year’s were.
I will say that I trust the front office to make the most of the summer transfer window, as they've done so in the last two seasons. Erik Thommy and Dany Rosero, probably the two players who have put in the best performances overall for SKC this season (and who were both missed badly against the Dynamo) were mid-season signings. I thought getting Felipe Gutierrez in the summer to take some of the minutes burden off of Radoja was one of the unsung decisions that sprung the playoff run last year as well. Especially considering the loosening of the roster restrictions which will come into effect in the summer, I don't think it's unrealistic to believe that valuable signings will be made in the summer.
The most obvious positions which need reinforcement are in central defense. Houston's second goal looked to be a direct result of fatigue from Radoja (who couldn't close down Griffin Dorsey as he dribbled towards the box) and Fontas (who couldn't get his boot out in front of him quickly enough to disrupt the pass from Dorsey to Aliyu). This team needs more depth at those positions, as one should expect those two veteran players to be susceptible to fatigue as the minutes build up in the heat of summer.
Getting Rosero and Walter back from injury (and I've heard there's a chance that Logan Ndenbe plays this year, but I don't know when we can expect it) will help as well, but it’s a fool’s errand to rely on always having the your best team healthy and fit. Again, with a team this veteran-laden, one must prepare for injuries to rack up. There are other teams in this league with key defensive players over the age of thirty (we’ve lost to three of them in Houston, the Galaxy, and Miami) who are able to supplement the fatigue that hits veteran defenders with younger players off of the bench, but it looks as if Peter Vermes doesn’t believe this team has players of high enough defensive quality on the bench to justify bringing them on late in matches.
Whether this is a case of capable defensive bench players not being given chances to perform or a case of capable defensive bench players not being signed, the blame lays at the feet of Vermes.
There's little else to be optimistic about for the moment. Sporting is still in the Open Cup, playing Tulsa FC next week. Nobody really jumps out as a clear favorite from the remaining sixteen teams. As the second East-most remaining MLS team in the tournament, it's kind of easy to see a path to the final in which SKC ducks every other MLS team, but given that it took 120 minutes to put away Omaha last week, that is cold comfort.
Basically every MLS team remaining in the tournament, short maybe of LAFC, is also trying to mine a silver lining out of a disappointing start to the 2024 season, so I don't even think we'd be able to hold that over our opponents if it came to that. I don't know what to expect out of anyone in this year’s edition of the Leagues Cup, especially now that the novelty’s worn off and everyone’s going to be exhausted from summer international tournaments anyway, but I'm skeptical of this team's chances there as well.
I just don't see how this team salvages anything out of this season, unless they absolutely ace the summer transfer window and another player makes the most of a chance the way that Jake Davis did last year.
This feels like a significant moment in the history of the club. I don't really see how Peter Vermes makes it through to the end of this season unless, again, there's a massive turnaround akin to what happened last year. Even as we’ve seen intriguing strategic flexibility from Vermes in his efforts to use the 4-2-3-1 formation with Agada and Pulido and we’ve seen him give chances to younger attacking players in recent weeks, if it doesn’t start working sometime soon, he’s going to continue to take the blame for the team’s issues.
Years like this happen in MLS, when things that had worked between a coach and a team just stop working, when a successful era comes to an end in a relatively quiet and unspectacular burn-out. It happened in Minnesota, Portland, and Colorado last year. It happened in Los Angeles and DC in 2021. I suspect it's happening in Kansas City, Nashville, and Seattle here in 2024. I suspect that we’ll see a record number of head coaching jobs open up all over the league by the year’s end1 due to increased pressure brought about by the league’s increased visibility as a result of the Apple deal, the Miami phenomenon, and the upcoming World Cup.
It will be a difficult transition, but unless something massive changes, I don’t see how it doesn’t happen.
At the moment: San Jose, Dallas, Chicago, Portland, New England, Nashville, Atlanta, New York City, Austin, and, hard as it will be for these teams to rip the band-aid off: Seattle and Kansas City.