Gametime here: 4:30am Sunday, so in KC is it 9:30 pm Saturday? The number indicate this is not a great game, but maybe more even than we're used to. Neither side has averaged more than 50 percent of possession, (Portland has a 46-45 edge in that) but no idea if that is intentional, tactical or just being not very good. I've watched at least the full highlights on every Portand game this season. They're getting better, but they have not been a very strong side. Better than us? Oh yeah. But not by much. They've collected 10 pts to our 5, have a -8 goal differential to our -18. etc. Anyway, it's a game and we're gonna play it. We will be missing: OUT: Kwaku Agyabeng (groin) OUT: Diego Borges (groin) QUESTIONABLE: Jansen Miller (hamstring) QUESTIONABLE: Justin Reynolds (hamstring) They will be missing: OUT: Omir Fernandez (foot) Upside: It's possible we will see a full match for Bassong! .
That’s correct and 7:30 pm here in Arizona. I hope there is enough excitement in the game to keep the KC area people awake,,,,if anyone is even watching.
I think the last time this team got shelled 6-0 Curt Onalfo was fired. The team just gave up on him. I don't know if the team is giving up on Wicky but if they do, I don't see how it could get any worse than this.... You know its really ugly when the timbers run out of wood to cut in the first half and have to drag in another log.
Wow. That was really, really crap soccer from us. Decent enough from them, but I'm not sure we really pushed them much. LBJ is not a defensive mid, at least not in the way we need a defensive mid. I think he has some qualilty. I think he is showing none of it. If, next time out, we sat Shapi, Meyer, Bartlow, Barlett and replaced them with inflatable punching clowns, would we be any worse? Might we be a bit better? Manu and Dejan have no role on this team when we're this bad. Sure, they look dangerous in moments, but when we're counting as much as Dejan defending in the box, it's a sign that things are not going well. We need to start hearing rumors now of who will be joining in July. And it should be a lot of names. Daddy Warbucks has to be disgusted by this mess. Minimum, we need a right back, Center back, d-mid and a left wing. I think we have one open int spot, so the rest will be local. but top shelf, I'd suggest. I do think it's unfair to fire Wicky at this moment with this mess of a roster. But life isn't fair.
SKC is not an MLS team. The fact that they are is a condemnation on the US soccer structure. As for who should be fired, Lee came, took over a team that finished last innthe West and made them considerably worse. Wiki may or may not be a good coach. Who knows but he's working with a squad of USL players. Lee is the clown that assembled this.
Who should be fired discussion.... When evaluating Lee, remember the best players on this roster are all PV holdovers. In 9 months, Lee hasn't brought in a single player that looks up to the MLS level. He has signed a bunch of USL quality Americans and a handful of mediocre foreign players. He seems clueless without the City Football infrastructure.
Thing is that I've convinced myself there's 0 chance of Lee being fired given the contract he signed so I look at what Wicky has done with the players he had. Even with lower quality players a decent coach can find a way to not allow 3+ goals each and every game. His adjustments that he makes are short term fixes from game to game but he doesn't have any ability to adjust tactics within the game to stop the bleeding. Last night "stopped" b/c Portland sat back and they reverted back to their not being very prolific offensively.
Really? Lee is the architect of the team. He made the decisions on who he let go, who stayed, and who he brought in. He took the job knowing he had a rebuilding year. But, to reduce the team down to the point he did made no sense. I think the realization set in when he couldn't even get a full team assembled, not only for pre-season training, but for the first game of the year. When he did bring in help, SKC got mediocre USL level players and young guys with little experience. They ownership made the mistake in hiring him, now they have to pay him out of his contract and get someone in there that can make a positive difference. Or... just keep him and and live with the embarrassment of a half empty home stadium and the record of the worst MLS team in the history of the league. Wicky is another chapter in the same story. He came in to coach a team and help rebuild it. But, a guy like PV would not let his team look anything like what we saw last night. Wicky is out of his element. Give him a lineup of experienced and competent MLS level players and he might be a mid table level Manager. That is not what SKC needs. Wicky fits right in with all the other bad selections made by Lee.
Yes really, I don't see ownership, even Mallouk as majority owner eating almost all of Lee's 7 year contract.
Seven years is a lot of contract to eat. I mean, what's he on, $1million to $3million, in that range?
If they didn’t include a performance metric in the contract, then they deserve the money and reputation they lose in the long run.
While I agree that there's zero chance Lee is fired, doing the easy thing isn't always the right thing. SKC did the easy thing with PV and look where that got them. Even if Wiki IS the problem, who hired him? And like I said, 9 months 1 full transfer window and I would argue that "his players" aren't in the top 3 of the roster.
I agree with Buzz that Lee stays on at least through next year. I think Rafa stays through at least August to see what he can do with the summer transfers. If anything, the current embarrassment may make Mallouk spend even more money on transfers, at least it should.
The problem is that SKC is limited on where it can spend that "extra" money. They basically can spend it on 3 U22s unless they want to lose half the GAM from using the 2/4 model. And SKC is more than 1 DP away from competing that they'd get by switching to the 3/3 model. They have a large amount of GAM to use, but only 1 international roster spot. Presumably that'll become 2 when Bassong gets his green card.
If, at the end of Lee's tenure, he leaves us with an MLS Cup, three Open Cups and four division titles, i'll be thrilled. The problem with Vermes is that he was very, very good, before he got very, very bad. Lee's reputation is that he really cannot be bothered with something as plebeian as urgency. We gave him seven years, and he's the sort who thinks, well, year one is a throwaway, can blame it on the last guy. We see this in the disaster of a roster he assembled. Nobody who watches MLS saw anything but maybe avoid the wooden spoon, just, as a best case scenario for this group. So far this season, our best defender is 17 years old, FFS. We all agreed, Voloder had served his time with SKC, and Logan N, in the eyes of many, was a bit pricey and not what he had once been and best to move on. but we thought, upgrading would be nice. Not downgrading. Significantly. We're not just losing games by 5 and 6 goals, we're deserving of losing games by 5 and 6 goals
I'm fine with 3 new U-22s. We can spend big-ishly, on these without it being a cap problem. At the very least, we should be thinking top-shelf USMNT jrs, and current young MLS players who are tearing it up and massively underpaid. We can upgrade at most positions with U22 signings. I mean, the fact that most of our current squad cannot play soccer makes that very possible. And, to go with those U-22s, we have the money to grab two and maybe three max or high GAM players.
I'm full on embracing the suck. I was kinda sad Portland let off the gas after half an hour. Woulda been historical to hang 10.
Peter was outstanding from 2009 to 2018. He turned around the disaster that were the Wiz and established a powerhouse club with a nationally recognizable identity. The first visible crack was the MLS conf semifinal vs Portland and the terrible coaching in that match. That was followed by missing the playoffs in 2019. My point has always been that a proactive ownership group would have understood that MLS was evolving and PV was not, and cut bait then after 2019. Instead they gave him 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and part of 2025 and some half way financial commitments. Those 5 seasons and change cemented SKC as one of the worst run organizations in sport (last four finishes 12, 8, 13, and 15 in the west). We're now dealing with the repercussions of the "its too hard to fire Peter because he's in charge of everything" decision. That was the easy button back then. Ownership kept pushing that button year after year, delaying the inevitable. This isn't a bash PV or bash ownership post, its a learn from your mistakes post and the consequences of taking the easy path when you should take the more difficult path. Ownership gave Lee seven seasons. Cool. No one, Lee and ownership included, gives two $hits about 2026. I have said this many times....just come out and say this year is irrelevant and no one is even trying to win now. Hell, they aren't even trying to resemble a professional team at this point. I agree firing Lee isn't going to happen. I also don't think firing Wiki is of any value since his roster is a bunch of USL players. So...what do you do? My guess is they will do absolutely nothing. Firing Wiki is the current easy button, but it will accomplish absolutely nothing. Lee hired him, after taking about 5 months to select him. Lee assembled this roster of rejects and misfit toys. Lee signed Capita and LBJ. Lee sold Salloi for nothing but GAM,. Mike clearly explained the strings that are tied to the use of that GAM. Lee selected the U22 model, which again Mike explained is highly constrained in how it can be implemented. Find me one good move Lee has made. Just one. A team run this poorly for this long should not be allowed to be in the first division. There should be financial consequences for ownership. If that financial consequence is eating 6 years of a bad decision, so be it. But if they chose to push the easy button and fire Wiki, the sure as hell better be sold on Lee being the man. Because after 5 plus years of being a bad MLS team, SKC are now the MLS laughing stock and making national news as such. What is left of the fan base won't survive another year or two of this crap.
Yeah, I don't disagree with 95 percent of this. Question, who is Mike? Burns? Having lived through demotions, and absolutely ruination, with two clubs, I disagree with the I wish there was pro/rel for MLS angle. Clubs do not bounce back, at all, from it way too often. But everything else, yep