Sporting Kansas City are the dregs of MLS and everyone is finally starting to notice
The club’s collapse is no longer deniable, but the real question is how Sporting KC ever allowed it to get this bad
The Athletic’s Tom Bogert has finally cottoned on to what I’ve been writing about for some time now, and that is Sporting Kansas City are the dregs of MLS. Yes, I did say Sporting Kansas City would make the playoffs this season.
Yes, I said Sporting Kansas City were a strong team coming into the campaign in spite of needing numerous upgrades around the pitch. Then Daniel Salloi was sold to Toronto FC around 48 hours before the MLS season kicked off and everything changed.
For me, Salloi’s sale to Toronto not only took away the club’s longest-serving player and captain, it also stripped away the exciting identity head coach Raphael Wicky had created in the final three preseason games.
Since then, Wicky has been unable to get that identity back. It also hasn’t helped that the captain he selected—who is a great striker—isn’t the leader the team need.
Bogert is right about Sporting KC being broken, but wrong about the comparison
On Monday, Bogert’s latest MLS article was published in The Athletic. In the article, Bogert discussed just how bad Sporting Kansas City are and how they have gradually become worse this season. He also gave a bit of information about the club’s past under Peter Vermes, who is directly responsible for the mess the club are now in.
In his article, Bogert wrote: “Vermes departed the club in 2025, and when new chief soccer officer David Lee took over, he needed to build foundations across a number of areas, well beyond an undermanned first-team roster. Vermes was across every decision at the club, much like Sir Alex Ferguson was at Manchester United. But behind the scenes, it was threadbare. There was not a scouting department, nor an analytics department of any kind that preceded Lee’s arrival.”
I disagree completely with Bogert’s comparison of Vermes and Sir Alex Ferguson. Ferguson remained successful right up until the day he left Manchester United.
Rather, Vermes was more like Arsene Wenger in his final years at Arsenal. He too oversaw everything at the club. Even when clubs surpassed Arsenal and football evolved, Wenger continued to do things his way. Yes, he won some domestic silverware in the final years of his Arsenal career, but the game seemed to pass Wenger by. All the while, he still wanted to do things his way.
The transparency problem makes Sporting KC’s decline even murkier
The problem with MLS, Sporting Kansas City, and the rest of the league’s clubs is the lack of transparency. We do not know exactly how threadbare Sporting’s front office was. We can only speculate. While Bogert said there was no scouting department, I’ve heard other Sporting Kansas City writers and bloggers say there was at least someone doing domestic scouting. Still, it was nowhere near enough.
In terms of the lack of analytics, it rings even truer that Vermes was like Wenger. Vermes was head coach, technical director, kitman, head janitor, groundsman, and bus driver. Whether it was due to a lack of finance and investment from the Illig family or Vermes’ need for control, he did everything.
New majority owner Peter Mallouk can state on social media that he is going to turn Sporting Kansas City around all he wants. But there needs to be urgency. Mallouk’s works are meaningless for supporters who pay their hard-earned cash to go to games. The best thing Sporting Kansas City are giving fans this season are four tickets, four hot dogs, and four drinks for $100. Now, that is certainly a deal. But fans do not want food, drinks, and shit soccer.
Why was Peter Vermes allowed to have so much power?
The lack of urgency is not only going to encourage the best players like Dejan Joveljic and Manu Garcia to leave, but it is also going to stop others from joining the club. No one wants to play for the worst team in the league who are about to give up over 100 goals this season.
So, why did Vermes have so much power? There are two scenarios I can think of as to why Vermes had so much power.
The first is simple: the Illigs had no clue what they were doing. The Illig family took over the club in 2006. A lot of Sporting fans will not have a clue about the club in 2006. If they were born, they likely were not fans. In 2006 there was talk about the club relocating, with Rochester floated as a possible destination.
The Illigs gave Vermes absolute power. Whether it was from a lack of understanding about professional sports or due to early positive results, the former player was given decision-making responsibilities for on-field and off-field issues.
The team later rebranded as Sporting Kansas City. Vermes then turned the franchise around, winning the U.S. Open Cup on three occasions and the MLS Cup once. However, today’s MLS is far more difficult to navigate. The Vermes way was not suited to 2025 (when he finally departed) like it was in 2013.
Sporting KC stood still while MLS evolved around them
The second scenario is that Vermes wanted to do things his way even if it damaged the club.
By all accounts, Vermes did everything at Sporting Kansas City. Yes, the club hired some other people over the years, like Mike Burns to be the sporting director. Burns and Vermes played together for the Kansas City Wizards. The pair knew each other before Burns was hired in Kansas City. Was this Vermes giving his mate a job? Was it the case of a coach hiring a sporting director he could influence into doing what he wanted?
Nothing at Sporting Kansas City happened without Vermes’ stamp of approval in terms of players. With a lack of a scouting department, it seems like players were signed based on Vermes’ contacts and buddies recommending them to him.
I’ve heard from other Sporting Kansas City writers that prior to the 2026 MLS season, the club had absolutely no one working in the front office. The entire coaching staff had to be rebuilt for the first team. In addition, the Sporting KC II team coaching staff had to be sorted out. Again, there is no transparency from MLS or its clubs. I would love to know exactly what happened, what went wrong, and why Sporting are in the place they are now from a voice from the inside.
The front office must have been a ghost town. David Lee must have shown up to work every day lonely, wondering when someone would show up. The Amazon delivery driver must have got sick of Lee stopping him for chats, asking him in for tea, because he was in need of talking to someone. Was it the Amazon delivery driver who recommended signing Diego Borges?
I’ve always said MLS works in cloak-and-dagger ways like WWE rather than in more visible ways like the Premier League. MLS and its clubs do not want people like myself and others to ask the hard questions. Why? Because they do not want to give too much information. Of course, MLS doesn’t have the same kind of journalists and bloggers the Premier League has—people who actually want to know how the sausage is made, where it comes from, and who’s screwing it up behind the scenes, not just how it tastes.
The good news is that the vast majority of people who cover and watch MLS are not bothered. Just watch Sporting Kansas City’s shitty social media posts to see they are not giving true soccer fans anything to care about.
Rather than showing clips from training sessions, gym sessions, or recovery sessions, the social media team is too busy offering up posts about what is on the players’ iPhone lock screen. Perhaps I’m in the minority. Perhaps I love soccer too much, and I want to see the players being put through their paces by the coaches. Fuck me, I apologize for being a fan.
Sporting Kansas City still have a great stadium and training facility. Yet the greatest asset, the personnel, has been neglected. The 2026 season was sold to fans as a rebuild campaign. However, it is not a rebuild campaign. This is a continuation of the club’s downward spiral.
A rebuild only occurs when urgency is shown. When development and improvement on the pitch are made. Since winning 2-1 against the LA Galaxy, Sporting Kansas City have lost six straight games in all competitions. They have gone backwards. This is not rebuilding. With world-class facilities, it should not be hard to get the personnel behind the scenes in place to move the club forward to at least having a winning record and fight for a playoff place. Until results get better, getting players to come to Kansas City will be a difficult sell. Fans are not happy. They are getting more and more angry with the state of the club and team’s performances. Selling them four tickets, four hot dogs, and four drinks for $100 isn’t going to change anything. It is a great deal.
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