This isn’t new territory for Sporting Kansas City’s fans. They’ve been here before, wondering what just happened and what’s next, hashing out the whys and the what-ifs on every social media platform known to humanity.
For the third time in five years, they’ve seen their team deal away a key player – and a popular key player at that. But if the pattern holds, Sporting are going to be just fine after trading forward Dom Dwyer to Orlando City SC on Tuesday for up to a record $1.6 million in total Allocation Money.
That’s because after each of those previous two deals, Sporting won silverware either that same season or in the following year.
So it’s OK to breathe and trust the process at Children’s Mercy Park, SKC supporters; Vermes has been here before, too. And his team are just two wins away from continuing the pattern with their third Open Cup title in six years, and they have home field advantage through the final.
“I don’t think I have to point back,” Vermes said on Tuesday, during a conference call to discuss the Dwyer trade. “It’s the consistency of the club. It is what it is. We have four core values here, and the first one is that the team is always first. We’ve never built the team around one player.”
That’s been amply proven already – even, perhaps especially, during the summer transfer window.
In 2013, forward Kei Kamara was sold to English side Middlesbrough, after previously spending three months of that MLS season on loan to Premier League side Norwich City.
He was Kansas City’s leading scorer in 2010, 2011 and 2012, scoring in the title match when Sporting won the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup in 2012, and had seven goals in 2013 when he was transferred.
You remember what happened after that: On a brutally cold evening in December 2013, Sporting won their second MLS Cup. Without Kamara.
Move forward a year, and it was Uri Rosell’s turn.
Rosell wasn’t a huge scorer, but if you want to talk key roles, look no further than the defensive midfielder in manager Peter Vermes’ trademark 4-3-3. It’s Sporting’s most important position on the pitch – even though being great at it means being invisible most of the time.
Anyway, Rosell was leading the league in interceptions and being expert at link-up and distribution – you know, d-mid stuff – when Sporting up and sold him to Sporting Clube de Portugal in the middle of 2014.
I can’t lie, the rest of that year did not go quite so well. Sporting made the postseason, but got bounced in the Knockout Round. There are occasions when good deals come at bad times. This was one of them, and I’ve been saying that since pretty much November 2014.
But then 2015 rolled around, and Sporting lifted the Open Cup for the second time in four years – their third trophy in those four years, to boot. How many teams, no matter their market size, would kill for that kind of haul and the ability to retool so quickly?
Vermes’ not-so secret weapons are his unswerving belief in how things should be done, and the power to make that happen by being both manager and technical director. He has a system in place, and in his TD capacity he has been among the league’s best at bringing in the players – often players in bad situations who need a change of place – to fit his system.
That’s also why he can let key players go without – at least publicly – sweating about who’s going to step up and step in.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Vermes said. “Dom’s had an amazing amount of contributions to this club, to this team, in a lot of different games over the time he’s been here. But at the same time, the team is never built around one player. Our objective has never been to be a team that’s really good one year and really poor the next year.
“We try to stay competitive year after year, and I think we’ve proven that with as many consecutive years (six) as we’ve been in the playoffs and the number of things that we’ve won. That’s our objective, and that has not changed in view of this deal.”
Dwyer’s gone, and he’ll be missed for all sorts of reasons. If you’re asking who replaces him, the answer is both “nobody” and “whoever’s next.” Sporting will move ahead, and the sky is definitely not falling on the Fountain City.
Sporting’s stifling defense is still intact – or it will be down the stretch, once Matt Besler and Graham Zusi get back from Gold Cup duty and Ike Opara (who is training again) returns from the concussion he sustained in the Open Cup quarterfinals. Young players are blossoming under the tutelage of the club’s veterans, and Vermes now has a big stack of cash to play with.
It’s entirely reasonable to wonder what’s next – but it’s also not unreasonable to expect Sporting to be right back in the mix for their next trophy.
