photo courtesy of Jarred Donalson
Sporting KC took a big first step in the playoffs on Sunday night in Colorado as they took out the Rapids 2-0 in the first leg of their home and home series. With the second leg at home at LIVESTRONG Sporting Park, KC is firmly in the driver's seat in the series.

In their first away game in about two months, Sporting KC looked strong against one of the strongest home teams in the league, but couldn't capitalize on their possession and ended up falling to RSL 1-0 at Rio Tinto. KC tried to set the tempo for the game early on wiht much of the early play taking place in RSL's half of the field.

Sporting Kansas City had a big opportunity to get themselves into a more favorable playoff position on Saturday when the 3rd place Houston Dynamo came to town. The Wizards grabbed the opportunity and took full advantage of it defeating the Dynamo 3-0 at LIVESTRONG Sporting Park. KC set out from the offset and took the game to the Dynamo, controlling play extremely well early on.

photo courtesy of Jarred Donalson
Last night KC pulled back another point late in the game against the LA Galaxy, converting a late penalty kick by Omar Bravo to earn a 2-2 draw with LA. It's the fourth time KC has earned a point after the 89th minute, giving them a -5 now in points gained/lost in the 89th minute on.

Kansas City had a great chance last night to get within 1 point of first place in the Eastern Conference after Seattle took apart Columbus earlier in the day. Unfortunately, once again, KC fell apart late and once again allowed two late goals to turn a win into a loss at LIVESTRONG Sporting Park. And it's not like this sort of thing hasn't come close on other game days either.

Camilo gets his head on the free kick for Vancouver's goal.
photo courtesy of Jarred Donalson
Sporting KC fell behind early against the Vancouver Whitecaps last night at LiveSTRONG Sporting Park, but were able to fight back and win all three with goals by Omar Bravo and Julio Cesar to give KC a 2-1 win over the Canadian side.

The MLS Player's Union has released player salaries for this year, as of May 1. There are certainly come surprises on KC's list. Here is the list, at the end I'll have my thoughts on the salaries. For those wondering why there are two numbers, the first number is the player's base salary, meaning what counts against the cap.

Tonight, the Terez Paylor at the KC Star is reporting the finalization of a contract with Julio Cesar Santos Correa, the Brazilian center back. Last week, Robb Heineman posted on Twitter that Cesar and Milos Stojcev would be announced within the week. Well we have the first one of those now according to the Star.

Before all the news about the Gold Cup and the stadium came out today, Robb Heineman threw out a little bit of news for Sporting KC fans to start the day. First Heineman tweeted that the team is expecting to announce the signings of Julio Cesar Santos Correa and Milos Stojcev in the next week or so.

Late last night, Thad at The Back Post got an interview with Peter Vermes up on his blog where he discusses a lot of things involving the preseason. So far Vermes seems to be pretty high on all of the team's draft picks, including supplemental draft pick, Mike Jones. Vermes (and people at training) confirmed that the Julio Cesar Santos is the same one that was guessed by people, the one that's played in England, Mexico, Spain, and multiple other places around the world.

Robb Heineman just tweeted that a trialist to keep an eye on this preseason is Julio Cesar Santos. There are a few when you do a Google search for that name, but the one that stands out, is this one that's currently listed as being on CS Maritimo's roster.
The reason that one stands out, is because of two reasons, first he previously played in the Spanish first division, La Liga, which goes along with a previous tweet by Heineman this past week.