I am (to the best of my knowledge, unless I’ve been replaced…) the Total-MLS writer who covers Sporting KC. However, my March schedule, being a college-town-sports-guy-bartender-at-an-Irish-pub is murderous. I had a Big XII Tournament run to deal with during SKC’s FirstKick opener against DCU. And then, for our home opener, the game I looked forward to all winter (well, at least until schedules were released), I had this little thing called “The Biggest Sales Day of Our Year By a Longshot, St. Patrick’s Day”. We only set our sales record by an extra $3k dollars and worked about 19 hours.
Thus, to my supporters group who uses the pub as our home base, I’m sorry. I know we haven’t quite started off with a bang, but luckily the club has!
So a Dane, a West African and a Samurai walk into a Chipotle…
The punchline is about what you expect: Two wins against the weaker middle of the pack Eastern Conference teams.
Trend number 1 for Sporting KC (As an aside, I need to lay off the Twitter. Every time I start to type Sporting, I try to “@” it and I try to “#” every SKC. Sigh.) is that C.J. Sapong is just a studly beast of a man. He’s the creature that mothers of MLS defenders tell their kids will crawl out from under their bed unless they clean their room. He allowed Chuck Norris to have all those sayings. He lives a life of intrigue and suspense as a quadruple agent spy. He completely changes Sporting KC’s offensive half of possession while he’s on the field. (User’s experience may vary.)
Truthfully, the way backline defenders are forced to clog up around C.J. makes a world of difference for everyone involved in SKC’s attack. Its going to be interesting to see how high his ceiling might climb if this torrid start continues.
Trend number 2: This is a TEAM. Which is funny as the Trend right after a Trend about a particular player being so dominant. But that’s how we do things in the flyover states. Seriously, check us out sometime. We love conundrums and paradoxes. Paradoxi? Paradoxa? Meh. We like juxtaposing contradictory things in relief of one another. Like deep-frying chocolate-covered bacon. It’s how we roll.
Peter Vermes must really put an amazing amount of emphasis on the idea of playing as a team into his practices and mindset for this group. Everyone has a role to play, and they embrace it. No one player tries to do too much, and everyone trusts that the gameplan and their own preparedness will prevail in the end. I truly believe that the players all respect what everyone else on the pitch is trying to accomplish and that they’re all working together for a win, every time.
Looking ahead:
FC Dallas is by no means a middle of the pack type team. With Blas Perez and Brek Shea both in the lineup, they are going to challenge RSL and LA for the top of the Western Conference heap. They present some match-up problems on paper for SKC, but as we all know, games aren’t played on paper. They’re played by tiny men in your TV set.
One of my good met-via-sports-blog-then-Twitter-then-real-life friends uses this phrase often as he follows his Dallas-centric American League baseball team: “Hello, Win Column. On to the next one.” Here’s hoping PV, C.J. & the Samurai make me able to Tweet that to him, over his Dallas-centric MLS team. (He’s a newly minted QPR fan, though, so plenty of opportunities to Tweet him that in the EPL!)
(image courtesy of Getty Images)
