If you’re embarking on a rebuild, one of the best things you could see is proof of concept with the young guys on the team. Something that says “Hey, don’t just keep us around, but plan to keep us in prominent roles because we can produce and win at a high level.”
Over the past three months, as manager Peter Vermes finally cut down the roles of some of the veterans, Sporting Kansas City got a pretty good dose of that – proof of concept in the form of better performances, more goals, and even a run to the US Open Cup final.
Here’s what we learned:
The mid-season turnaround started when Vermes shifted Jake Davis from his starting right-back job into a role in central midfield as a combative, ball-winning, box-to-box No. 8 who set both the physical and emotional tone for his team.
I did not see this coming. Not remotely. And understand that while physicality is Davis’s calling card out there (he chews up ground and wins a ton of very, very hard challenges), he’s not out there just kicking people:
The kid can ball.
You could count on one hand the number of times Vermes had his team line up in anything but the traditional 4-3-3 over the past 15 years. But as things got worse and worse throughout this season, and it became more and more apparent that Alan Pulido was not up to playing as a No. 9 every single time out, we started to see a bog-standard 4-2-3-1 creep into Sporting’s selection of matchday formations.
The 4-2-3-1 and the 4-3-3 are close cousins, after all, so it makes a lot of sense. Add in the personnel factor – Pulido is a DP on big money for the next couple of years, so he’s not going anywhere, which means Vermes had to figure out how to get him onto the field with William Agada, who can only play as a No. 9 – and it all sort of came together pretty decently.
The results bear that out, as Sporting have registered both a better expected goals differential and a better actual goal differential in the 4-2-3-1 in 2024, Wednesday night’s 3-1 loss at LAFC included.
Agada, by the way, falls snugly into that first bullet point with Davis. He bounced back from a miserable 2023 with a very good 2024 that, so far, sees him on 11g/4a in 2,100 minutes.
He should be the starter next season. Just don’t let him take any PKs.
When Gadi Kinda left after last year (still, it should be said, picking chunks of St. Louis CITY defenders out of his cleats) and wasn’t replaced with a DP No. 10 in the winter window, the party line was that the team would spend the first half of the year figuring out who they were and then add a new DP No. 10 in the summer.
Well, it didn’t work out that way. Even after both Vermes and club ownership said, in the spring, that they were looking at a three-window rebuild starting immediately, it didn’t really start immediately. In fact, it barely began at all.
There was no DP added this summer, nor any U22 Initiative signing. There weren’t even any compelling rumors of the above. Instead, the only official addition was Spanish center back Joaquín Fernández. He fills a need on paper; he's yet to debut on grass.
They’ve got two windows left in this rebuild. Gotta make ‘em count.
- Jake Davis (CM): I can’t remember the last time I was this pleasantly surprised by a player. Davis has been excellent in central midfield.
- William Agada (FW): Sporting fans get frustrated at Agada, but he’s 99th percentile in npxG and is 86th percentile in finishing them. Over the course of his two years in KC, he’s got 23g/6a in 3,700 minutes. That’s borderline elite.
- Stephen Afrifa (W): Hasn’t gotten enough minutes to truly shine, but he’s been a super dangerous, direct option in his limited time.
- Logan Ndenbe (LB): The breakout star of last year’s playoffs recovered from his torn ACL by late summer, and has been working his way back to fitness since.
- Alan Pulido (FW/AM): He signed a massive, three-year extension after last season. So, yeah. He’s gonna be around.
Lots of big decisions to make this winter as Johnny Russell, Tim Melia, Rémi Walter and Andreu Fontàs are all out of contract, while there’s a club option on Erik Thommy. That’s potentially $4.1 million of open salary budget (based on this year's MLSPA Salary Guide). And then I wonder about Nemanja Radoja, whose 2025 deal is guaranteed. But he's missed the past two months with a groin injury and his ~$1.5 million reported salary sits in the sweet spot of “this isn’t too big to buy out and we’d get a lot of flexibility if we did.”
So Sporting could very quickly free up over $5.5 million of salary budget and open a DP slot. They have a ton of room to add some quality, top-end pieces. That alone should have them looking like a new, better team. Provided Vermes and new sporting director Mike Burns can find the right pieces – no guarantee given KC’s hit rate over the past half-decade.
Beyond that, they’ve got to figure out some stuff about the supporting cast: Is Zorhan Bassong a starter or just a nice depth piece? How real is the Khiry Shelton-to-right-back experiment? Are any of the CBs actually high-level starters? Is a return of odd-year Dániel Sallói inevitable? Can Melia do it for one more year?
They need answers to all of the above, ASAP.
It’s a massive ask for one window. Hell, it’d be a lot for three.
