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Episode 390: Preview of Sounders-Sporting KC
71 Plays2 years ago
We caught up with Jimmy Mack of No Other Pod a Sporting Kansas City Podcast to get a better understanding of what's going on with this weekend's opponent.
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Transcript
Sponsorship and Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
This episode of Nos Arietes is sponsored by Full Pull Wines, a Seattle-based wine retailer and proud sponsor of Nos Arietes since 2011. Full Pull was founded in 2009, is based in Seattle, and is owned and operated by longtime sounder supporters. They offer the best boutique wines of the world to members of their mailing list, with special focus on their home, the Pacific Northwest.
00:00:21
Speaker
Hey, this is Christian Roldan. And Jordan Morris from the Seattle Sounders Football Club. And you're listening to... There's no study at this. Here we go. Come on! Hey, Ocean! Let's go! What a save by Fry! The Seattle Sounders have done it! MLS co-pointers! Here comes Ray D'Ace from the middle to crowd it! The vehicle! And now they truly can't stop the celebrations.
00:01:04
Speaker
Seattle Sounders, the greatest MLS team in history. This is a tiny f***ing doll.
00:01:34
Speaker
Is
Sporting Kansas City Analysis
00:01:38
Speaker
Welcome back to another episode of Nos Adiete, sponsored by Full Pool Wines, Watson's Counter, and our Substack subscribers. I am Jeremiah O'Shan. Joining me today is Jimmy Mack of Northern Pod, a Sporting Kansas City podcast, and undergoing kind of an interesting revolution in terms of the way Sporting Kansas City is being covered these days.
00:01:42
Speaker
that why you young people call twerking?
00:02:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's a bit different than what Kansas City fans are used to. I mean, sporting Kansas City, especially since the Rebrand has been relatively successful, especially for a small to mid market team, a lot of trophies, the playoff streak that came to an end within the last couple of years. And this is the first time that there's been some real true adversity that fans in the club itself are trying to come to terms with. Yeah, so let's get into that right away, I suppose.
00:02:32
Speaker
It's 07 and 03 coming into this game. Only three goals scored. I believe the stat that jumps out to you is three goals, three red cards through 10 games. That's not an equilibrium you expect to find very often. It is not. And, you know, quite honestly, it's what's almost more shocking is it's not for lack of shots being taken.
00:02:54
Speaker
sporting Kansas City. If I look now, at least according to American Soccer Analysis, they've fallen all the way to the sixth place for shots taken. They were in the top three, four for a while, but for a club that's taken 137 shots on the year for three of those to be goals, it's not a good success rate. And part of the problem, at least offensively, is
00:03:20
Speaker
none of the chances are coming from inside the box or anywhere near the goal. You're getting shots but they're from four or five yards outside the box and you're shooting a prayer hoping to get a deflection or they're whipping in a cross and getting a low percentage chance from a header but there's no real creativity up the middle and the excuse for a while was
00:03:44
Speaker
Well, Alan Palito, he's not available due to injury. Johnny Russell, he's not available due to injury. Gotti Keenda, one of the designated players, not available due to injury. All of those players have made their way back and the problems are persisting. So there's something that seems to be broken with sporting Kansas City's attack.
00:04:01
Speaker
Yeah, if we go back to the last time the Sounders and Sporting Kansas City met, obviously Sporting Kansas City was still winless, but the outlook was totally different. They had tied at least two games at that point. Maybe they had even tied three. They'd been competitive basically in every game. They hadn't yet played with any of these injured players. And it does seem like in a way the Sounders game ended up being sort of a turning point in a negative,
00:04:31
Speaker
in a very negative way for, I don't know if they were necessarily related, but if you go back to that game, they score first off of a, of a rebound, maybe one of the only goals they scored from inside the box as it turned out. But, you know, there were, and especially up until the red card on Ben sweat, it was a reasonably competitive game. And then does the wheels have completely come
Turning Points and Player Insights
00:04:54
Speaker
off since then?
00:04:55
Speaker
Yeah, they have. And that was the first game that Johnny Russell made his first appearance of the year. He came in in the 61st minute. At that point, it was two to one Seattle. Jordan Morris had two of his four goals. And then like you said, Ben Sweat kind of a boneheaded move where he gets his second yellow card in a span of 10 minutes. He gets
00:05:18
Speaker
Ejected from the game and then the rest is history two more goals scored by Jordan Morris to complete his His quad for the game, I guess and I've I've never seen Peter Vermees in a postgame press conference So openly mad at him, you know individual performance He doesn't typically go after specific players and he didn't name drop Ben sweat But it's also no coincidence that that was the last game Ben sweat played for sport in Kansas City before being waved
00:05:46
Speaker
And and so that I think you're right. They had two ties before that two draws and they had lost two games, but the first game was on the road against Portland and you could argue that analytically they were actually the better team in that game. It was. It was a rough loss and then you know, even against the Colorado Rapids on the road ended up losing that game one zero. But again, you could say that the underlying statistics underlying analytics are there. There's there's something that could be built upon and
00:06:14
Speaker
You didn't have Allen Polito back. You didn't have Gotti Kena back. Johnny Russell hadn't yet made his way back. That's all out the window now. Those advanced stats. If you look at americansockeranalysis.com, sporting Kansas City has steadily gotten worse week over week in all of the advanced statistics and the designated players are largely back, even if not a full 90 minutes fit. And there's not a lot of light at the end of the tunnel right now.
00:06:38
Speaker
Well, you talk about one of those, uh, designated players, Johnny Russell, uh, did a post game interview after the last game where he, you know, he's, he's shirtless, he's sweaty. I don't know what the, I don't know how they normally do the post game in Kansas city, but this,
00:06:54
Speaker
Yeah, he looked like a player who had been through it. And the words coming out of his mouth suggested just as much. And you don't hear a lot of players say things like, I don't know what's going on and I don't know how to fix it. And yet that's almost exactly what he said. I mean, it felt pretty dire.
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah. And I think there were two things that he said that stuck out to me and Johnny Russell's been the captain this year. So it adds another layer of concern. If your captain's the one out there saying, I genuinely don't know how to fix this or where to go from here. But yeah, he's, it's been tough for him as the captain and as one of the better players on the team. He's the one that many of us in the media want to talk to in the post game. And it's gotten to the point where you
00:07:37
Speaker
You can only ask the same question so many ways, and you can only give the same answer so many ways if you're the player. And so, yeah, after the game, after the loss at home to Montreal, he kind of just sat there on the field for a while silent. And then he came into the locker room and kind of sat at his locker silent for a while until the press guy for sporting kind of was like, hey, they would like to talk to you. And even before he talked to us, he was like, I don't know what else to say.
00:08:01
Speaker
And then he was asked for his thoughts. And he goes, I don't know how you fix it. I'm going to be honest. We don't look like a team that we are. But the part that stuck out to me was when he was asked what the most frustrating part is. And he goes, when we make a mistake, everyone's head goes down. You just feel it. The confidence drains immediately. And it's so hard to get yourself out of that when you're in that situation.
00:08:22
Speaker
And if you're as the captain or as a team who's trying to dig yourself out of a hole, the second you make a first mistake, if that just drains any confidence or resilience out of you, that's the part that's almost most concerning to me because I don't know how you turn that around if the players themselves are feeling that way and don't know how to turn it around.
00:08:41
Speaker
So I don't know how much awareness there is among the players, but it is becoming sort of a national, a national narrative. You know, they are one game away from tying the worst start in MLS history. And there's a lot of bad starts in MLS history. There was the own nine start from TFC back in 2012.
00:09:02
Speaker
Where they they won game 10, so they're technically on the same pace as as sporting Kansas City right now But the the the record I believe is the rapids at 11 game I guess there's two teams that have done 11 games But the most recent was a rapids in 2019 and that's the infamous Anthony Hudson Team where he said, you know, this is what happens something along the lines of we've got a bottom group of players And and that ended up getting him fired along those same lines is
Coaching and Future Prospects
00:09:31
Speaker
Is Peter Rameez in any sort of trouble here? I mean, he has been the absolute face of Sporting Kansas City since even before their relaunch. He has complete control over the sporting side of things. There is no person, I think, more closely associated with one MLS team than Peter Rameez is with Sporting Kansas City. And it's almost been a, you know, I know on the national media, there's been a lot of sense of
00:09:59
Speaker
It's pointless to even talk about him leaving because it's impossible, but yet it seems like maybe we're getting to a, I mean, is it true? What's your sense of his status within the club? Yeah. If you would have asked me to start the year, I would have said there is a virtual 0% chance that anything happens to Peter Vermees this year, regardless of results. If for no other reason than whether right or wrong, before the season started, ownership signed him to a five-year contract extension.
00:10:28
Speaker
His contract was set to be up after this year and many people after the way last year went, even though they had a relatively strong start or excuse me, finish over the final two months of the year. I think many of us thought they'll see how this season goes and talk about an extension over the course of the year and maybe give him a year to fix it. He's earned that.
00:10:48
Speaker
Well, they signed them to the five-year extension before the season started. And in my mind, I was like, well, I guess they've committed to Peter Vermees. That's that. That's their statement. I don't think anybody expected to go winless in the first 10 games, three goals, three red cards, as you said, and for players like Johnny Russell or Peter Vermees to really have no answers.
00:11:11
Speaker
I think as strange as it may sound, there does seem to be a growing sense that that scene is getting warmer. This was the first time in my many years of attending games at Children's Mercy Park or Sporting Park or Livestrung Park, whatever it's been called, that you heard audible chants from the cauldron, not the entire cauldron, but a noticeable part of the cauldron, the supporter section that said, vermice out after the second goal that Montreal scored. And then at the end of the game, a pointed chant, hey, vermice, it's all your fault.
00:11:40
Speaker
which is a play on a chant that they normally chant at the opposing goalkeeper when they give up a goal. So there's this, it's almost this dual sort of competing interest that's going on where the fans are growing restless and there's disagreement amongst the fans as how do we handle this? We've never had to face this as a club before.
00:12:00
Speaker
But then there's the question that nobody really has an answer to is, how does the ownership group view this? How does the president of the team view this? Because we have not heard from them since we knew that Peter Vermees was signed to an extension. There has been no statement like we got from Chris Klein of the LA Galaxy, where he said, hey, if we don't make the playoffs, I'm going to resign. There hasn't been anything. So I think that's the question, and that's the unknown that, quite frankly, many sporting fans want to know is,
00:12:27
Speaker
Does the ownership group remember they own a soccer team? And if they do, this isn't how Neil Patterson, the late owner who helped rebrand the team, probably would have wanted things to go. And we haven't won a championship since his passing. So it's an unprecedented time in the sport in Kansas City era of this club.
00:12:48
Speaker
Well, that's that's the big picture on what's going on with sporting Kansas City. But let's narrow in a little bit on what's going on this week. I mean, what is the mood like? I mean, this is in one sense, you can see how this is a big match for them for all the reasons stated before. But on the other, it's almost a free week in some sense, because I don't think anyone on the outside is expecting sporting Kansas City to win this game.
00:13:14
Speaker
They're going on the road where they haven't had a ton of success. They're playing against the top team in the Western Conference in the Seattle Sounders. And there's like no pressure, I would think, in a sense. But maybe that's me being hyper-focused from a Sounders perspective.
00:13:32
Speaker
Sure. Well, no, I think in some ways you're right, because I think there was much more pressure on this past week at home against Montreal, who's also been a struggling team. And it was sort of, if you can't beat Montreal at home with all the injuries Montreal had, then what are we doing? So nobody on sporting's side, at least from a fan perspective, expects sporting to go to Seattle and earn a point, let alone win. So in that sense, I think, yeah, this is sort of, maybe you're playing with a little bit of house money, but
00:14:02
Speaker
On the other hand, okay, well, if you're already writing this one in as a loss, that's 11 straight weeks without a win. The playoff line, even if it's 67% of the teams that make it, that gap is continuing to grow.
00:14:18
Speaker
And there's really nothing that the team has shown on the field over the past month and a half that's given any indication that this will turn around and start getting better. So I don't think losing to Seattle on the road is going to be the straw that broke the camel's back that will cost for me his job or lead to anything additional, but
00:14:38
Speaker
The biggest problem for this club is fans have been really angry if they start turning from angry to apathetic because they just don't care anymore because this is just expected. That's where you'll start getting in trouble and you'll learn lose season ticket members and whatnot. So it's not a great time.
00:15:00
Speaker
Well, what is going on with the roster right now? You know, Johnny also seems like he's fully back. Alan Palito, I know, has been playing. You mentioned Gaddy. Inda has started working his way back. Tim Malia is back in the lineup. What is the health and outlook sort of of the team from a, you know, a straightforward perspective?
00:15:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's been about as healthy as it's been in a while. Obviously the biggest injury at this moment is Willy Agata, the striker who came in in the middle of the year last year in the summer transfer window and kind of took the team and in some cases the league by storm scoring like nine goals in his 12 appearances or whatnot and ended up winning the club golden boot.
00:15:37
Speaker
after making 12 appearances or something around there. He is not available because they discovered he had a stress fracture in his leg. So he had to have surgery. He's out till at least mid-July. So he's not available. That leaves basically Alan Palito as the lone striker. He's been working his way back to full fitness. So he should be available. Johnny Russell is available on the right side. Daniel Shalloway available on the left. That's your starting front three that everybody expected you to have.
00:16:03
Speaker
Then you have Eric Tommy and Gotti Kinda, two central attacking midfielders who are both designated players available. Remy Voltaire, your first choice, six or eight, depending on what position you want to play him in. So many of the first choice players are there. The biggest question mark outside of why nobody is scoring has been, what is this defense going to look like?
00:16:29
Speaker
For better or for worse, Graham Zusi is still there, plugging along at right back. But he's injured and our backup, Kaden Pierre, is also injured. So we have a young midfielder who has stepped in and played right back the last couple of games in Jake Davis. It's been a revolving door of center backs because they all keep getting red cards or getting in Peter Vermees' doghouse. So they get benched for a game and then another one makes them mad. So then that rotates.
00:16:52
Speaker
You know, there's just been. Everybody's been trying to do too much, it seems like, and nobody trusts. Each other or in some cases their own ability. Nobody wants to take the shot. They look to make one too many passes. There's a half second too much of hesitation and then the ball gets stolen in the midfield. The center backs are up too high, played over the top. Suddenly it's a counter goal and once a team scores before sporting Kansas City does, it seems like it's impossible for them to make a comeback.
Key Matches and Media Appreciation
00:17:21
Speaker
And so if, uh, and how is Tim Malia looked, you know, he, he gets kind of stepped right back when he got healthy and it was starting again, right? Yeah, it is interesting because John pulse camp, the young keeper, um, who came up through the LA galaxy system and has been with sporting for a few years now, he started, uh, the year he finished the year last year with, with Amelia getting hurt and, and pulse camp, uh, continued.
00:17:44
Speaker
starting the year because Amelia had a knock that he picked up in the preseason. And quite honestly, Pulse Camp played very well for the first month or so of the year. And there were many on the sporting side who thought this might be the transition moment. This might be John Pulse Camp's job and to Amelia might be sort of that available for open cup games or whatnot.
00:18:01
Speaker
Uh, and then about a month ago, everything just sort of switched. Emilia was suddenly the first choice keeper again. And, and there wasn't anything that happened in particular, but he stepped in and, and he's been fine. I mean, he hasn't been the Tim Emilia from, you know, 2019 or, or whatnot. He's his age is showing, but over the last couple of games, uh, he had stepped up and made some
00:18:25
Speaker
pretty important saves that saved a game from being 4-0 or 5-0 instead of 2-0. So he's there, but there's only so much a keeper can do if the back line in front of you doesn't have any sort of organization or cohesion. So I think there is a real risk for Tim Melia and for this revolving door of a back line that the Sounders front line might be able to feast on them a little bit more like Jordan Morris did before.
00:18:56
Speaker
Well, certainly from our perspective, we hope to see that continue. What is the outlook beyond this game for sporting games? If this game goes the way that most seem to expect it to, what's the next game on the calendar that you circle as saying, okay, this is where it has to stop?
00:19:15
Speaker
Um, it seems weird to, to already be here, but the game that I'm looking at, because there's the open cup game in Houston after this week. And I think most people expect us to lose that game on the road in Houston. And quite honestly, I don't think an open cup run would satisfy the fan base. If the MLS season goes the way it does.
00:19:33
Speaker
There's a home game at Minnesota after that. Okay, that's a pretty important one because the two after that on the road to LAFC, probably chocking that up as a loss. But the game that I have circled on my calendar, May 20th, it's the first game against St. Louis City and it's in St. Louis at City Park. And as we all know, St. Louis has hit the ground running to start the year, I think better than many of us thought they would. And I think that's only added
00:19:59
Speaker
insult to injury for sporting Kansas City fans because this was the year that Kansas City fans finally had a team that could be arrival within a reasonable driving distance and we were going to show St. Louis what it's like to be an MLS team and suddenly those tables have totally flipped. So it's almost like
00:20:17
Speaker
The constellation prize, I guess, is to go to St. Louis and beat them in the first meeting between the two teams. But for a team with the history and as proud as the Sporting Kansas City fan base is, it's kind of sad, I guess, that, you know, what you're counting on is I hope we can beat the expansion team the first time we play them just so they don't hold that over us for the rest of the year. But that's the game that I have circled right now on May 20th.
00:20:41
Speaker
Well, I don't envy your position. I do remain impressed with the way that the independent media has continued to cover sporting Kansas City and the entire Kansas City soccer scene. So I hope you continue to take some pride in that. We tried.
00:21:01
Speaker
Yeah i think it's it's it's been fun it's been fun you know i am a big proponent of independent media and you guys do it as well as anyone out there so i really appreciate you taking the time jimmy working people find you working people look for your stuff.
00:21:19
Speaker
Sure, yeah, so you can find me at No Other Pod. We're part of the Kansas City Sports Network, so you can find us. Just search No Other Pod or search KCSN Soccer on wherever you get your podcasts. Then you can find us on all the social platforms at No Other Pod. You can find me at JCMAC03. And yeah, we're out there. We're available. We like to engage with fans, with opposing fans. So feel free to get in touch with us and we'd love to talk some soccer.
00:21:45
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for joining us, Jimmy, signing off for No Sadietes on behalf of our sponsors, Full Pull Wines, Watson's Counter, and of course our Substaff subscribers. I am Jeremiah O'Shan. I will catch you next time.
00:22:36
Speaker
We love you. Let's win another one!