PSP's Eastern Conference preview looks at each club and how the Union match up against them. In the end, PSP picks Michael Farfan and the Union to finish ... well, click on to read more.
Sporting Kansas City is being pegged as a serious championship contender after making several major off-season additions, but it is a potential second high-profile departure that could put a serious dent in this championship plans.
The BBC in England is reporting that Sporting KC midfielder Kei Kamara is on the verge of a move to Norwich City, pending the receipt of a work permit.
Here's a look at the updated youngest and oldest goal scorers in league play and all competitions for Sporting KC in their history.
This year on the list of youngest goal scorers, there was only 1 new addition to the list. Oriol Rosell landed himself at 3rd on the list for goals in league play at 20 years and 56 days when he scored against Toronto.
Sporting KC continued a busy start to their offseason, trading for San Jose defender, Ike Opara for the team's second round pick in the 2013 MLS Superdraft. Opara was the Earthquakes first round pick (3rd overall) in the 2010 MLS Superdraft, where KC took Teal Bunbury with the 4th overall pick. In the 2010 draft the top four picks of Bunbury, Opara, Danny Mwanga, and Tony Tchani were all seen as the cream of the draft class.
There are no injuries reported for the Dynamo. Sporting will be without Teal Bunbury, Cyprian Hedrick, and Paulo Nagamura. Julio Cesar and Roger Espionza are probable.
Brad Davis and Tally Hall are both one yellow card away from a one-match ban.
Sporting KC got their 18th league win of the season, good for the most in a non-shootout year. It's also good for the second most in any year for KC, including the shoot out years.
The win was KC's 10th at home this season, the first time since 2000 that the team got 10 home wins and only the second time post shootout that it's happened.
Prior Lake, Minn. native Teal Bunbury will be sidelined for 6-8 months with a torn ACL and a
damaged LCL in his left knee, sustained in Sunday's match against the Red Bulls. In that Sunday
match, Bunbury used his speed to get around a Red Bulls defender after Graham Zusi played a looping
early cross.
After leaving the match on Sunday after a collision with Red Bulls 'keeper Bill Gaudette,
Sporting KC announced a day later that striker Teal Bunbury will undergo season-ending surgery on
Friday.
The injury occured just four minutes into the match, when Bunbury beat Gaudette to a ball just
outside the box, crossing the ball to Kei Kamara for an easy goal and 1-0 Sporting lead.
Three days after the US Open Cup final there were plenty of fans that were worried about a
potential let down last night at Livestrong Sporting Park when Kansas City took on DC United. It
was anything but though as KC controlled the game and could have won by quite a bit more than the
2-1 score line.
If you were expecting a let down after Sporting KC played 120 minutes against Seattle Sounders
FC in the US Open Cup, you couldn't have been more wrong. No physical or emotional fatigue were
apparent against DC United as the two sides squared off with a shot at first place in the Eastern
Conference on the line.
D.C. United's road horror show continued with a 2-1 defeat at the hands of Sporting Kansas City.
United has now lost four consecutive matches on the road and drops further from the top of the
Eastern Conference.
Sporting KC recorded their 6th road win in league play and their 7th in all competitions this year.
Both are record numbers for wins in a non-shootout season. They're also the second most in any year
for KC.
Matt Besler made his 100th start in all competitions for KC. He's the 21st player to hit that mark.
It wasn't pretty, but it was effective, Sporting KC ended their run without a win with a 1-0 win
over the New England Revolution at Gillette Stadium. With the US Open Cup final on Wednesday,
Sporting never seemed to really get going, coasting through the game, doing just enough to get the
result on the road.
Lee Nguyen struggled to make a impact against Sporting Kansas City's physical defending. (Photo:
Chris Aduama/aduama.com).
Let's be honest with one another: theĀ Shalrie Joseph trade to Chivas USA had nothing to do with
the New England Revolution's 1-0 loss to Sporting Kansas City. This loss was about New England's
poor play through the midfield, though.
Last night's win was Sporting's 5th on the road this season, tying a team record for wins in a
non-shootout season, tying the 2000, 2004, and 2005 for the record. It's also the 3rd most
including the shoot out years, behind the 1997 (9 wins) and 1996 (6 wins) seasons.
Teal Bunbury's goal was his 10th away from home in league play, tying Scott Sealy and Mo Johnston
for 6th on that list.
It seems like the M.O. for Sporting KC this year has been to employ the high pressure on their
opponents, create giveaways and create a number of chances in the game, while limiting the chances
that their opponents get. Last night though, Sporting KC reversed that role a little bit. KC still
employed some high pressure, but an early goal for Jacob Peterson allowed Sporting KC to sit back a
little bit and basically told the Crew "OK come and beat us.
Sporting KC took care of business at home last night, earning themselves their fourth trip in five
years to the US Open Cup quarterfinals. Unfortunately in none of those other 3 years has KC been
able to win their quarterfinal match up. On June 26th against Dayton, KC will have the opportunity
to break that cycle.
Sporting KC finally ended their long winless run and got a win May for the first time since 2009.
KC's last win in the month of May happened on May 16th, 2009, in Utah against Real Salt Lake. A
span of 14 games in the month of May since KC last won. It wasn't without some stress at the end
again for KC as they almost losta 2 goal lead again against the San Jose Earthquakes.
Since CJ Sapong was drafted by KC, this is the first league game that Sapong has not played in, a
span of 41 games.
Teal Bunbury's 2 goals gave him 9 in league play away from home. That moves him past Sasha
Victorine, Eddie Johnson, Matt McKeon, and Mark Chung and into 8th place on that list.
In a vacuum, last night's draw in Colorado is a good result. KC ended their 3 game losing streak,
on the road in a place where KC normally doesn't get wins. Teal Bunbury got out of his goal scoring
slump picking up 2 goals, and Seth Sinovic returned to the first team.
With Kei Kamara's departure for Norwich for at least the first 10 games of the MLS season, there's a hole to fill not only on the right wing, but offensively.
First, let's just get it out of the way, you can't just replace Kamara. No one on KC's roster at this time plays the same style and the same way that Kamara does.
Continuing my updating of stats this offseason, tonight we're going to look at the players who have been capped for their national teams as a member of Kansas City. The first number is their caps while appearing for KC, the second is goals.
Josh Wolff - USA - 38 - 6 Jimmy Conrad - USA - 28 - 1 Preki - USA - 26 - 4 Roger Espinoza - Honduras - 25 - 3 Kerry Zavagnin - USA - 21 - 0 Eddie Johnson - USA - 20 - 3 Shavar Thomas - Jamaica - 19 - 0 Chris Klein - USA - 17 - 3 Gary Glasgow - Trinidad & Tobago - 16 - 1 Khari Stephenson - Jamaica - 15 - 3 Scott Sealy - Trinidad & Tobago - 14 - 1 Tony Meola - USA - 12 - 0 Kei Kamara - Sierra Leone - 11 - 2 Craig Rocastle - Grenada - 9 - 0 Sunil Chhetri - India - 9 - 5 Stephane Auvray - Guadeloupe - 8 - 1 Davy Arnaud - USA - 7 - 1 Graham Zusi - USA - 6 - 1 Peterson Joseph - Haiti - 6 - 0 Nick Garcia - USA - 6 - 0 Uche Okafor - Nigeria - 6 - 0 Teal Bunbury - USA - 4 - 1 Onandi Lowe - Jamaica - 3 - 2 Mike Sorber - USA - 3 - 0 Miklos Molnar - Denmark - 3 - 0 CJ Sapong - USA - 2 - 0 Mark Chung - USA - 2 - 0 Jermaine Hue - Jamaica - 2 - 0 Chris Henderson - USA - 1 - 0 Steve Pittman - USA - 1 - 0 Digital Takawira - Zimbabwe - Unknown
I've still been unable to find cap numbers for Digitial Takawira while he playing for KC unfortunately.
Yesterday I read a good article about FC Dallas rookie Matt Hedges and where his season ranks in regards to other Dallas rookie seasons. I decided to take a look at this myself for Sporting KC. Obviously this seasons isn't looking like a stellar year for KC's rookies, in fact currently the 2012 rookie class for KC is set to finish the season with the fewest minutes played of any rookie class in KC's history.
With the US team out of Olympic qualifying, it means that some plans this summer are likely being
changed. I think plenty of people were thinking/expecting Teal Bunbury to miss some time this
coming season while in London. Now, Bunbury will stay in KC through the summer (barring him being
sold this summer) and that means that we're going to be getting a much longer discussion on who
should be the starter, Bunbury, or last year's rookie of the year, CJ Sapong.
To support Breast Cancer Awareness Month, MLS stars Fredy Montero (Seattle Sounders), Darlington Nagbe (Portland Timbers), Kenny Cooper (New York Red Bulls), Chris Pontius (DC United) and Teal Bunbury (Sporting...
Sporting KC got some extremely bad news today on the injury front. Teal Bunbury, who only played 14
minutes last night against the Red Bulls before being subbed out, is done for the year. Today
Sporting announced the Bunbury had torn his ACL and damaged his LCL. Bunbury picked up the injury
on Kansas City's goal after colliding with New York goalkeeper, Bill Gaudette.
Last night's win was Sporting's 17th, setting a team record for wins in a non-shootout season. It also ties the 1996 season for the second most wins in team history.
It was the 21st win in all competitions for Sporting this year, tying the 1997 season for the most wins in team history.
The second goal last night was Graham Zusi's 8th home goal in league play, tying him with Claudio Lopez, Jose Burciaga, and Teal Bunbury for 15th on that list.
(Note: we were unable to do a post-game chat for this game at the last minute; however, please join
us Monday for the critical last group stage match and post-game analysis) All of the warm fuzzies
after Thursday's thrashing of ...
Visit http://www.majorleaguesoccertalk.com for the rest of the story.
The talk from many US fans heading into Olympic qualifying was that this US team could potentially
medal at the Olympics this summer in London. Now the team faces a real possibility of not even
making it to the semifinals in Kansas City next weekend after the U23 team played very poorly
losing 2-0 to Canada tonight.
The US U23 team got their Olympic qualifying campaign started on the right foot with a 6-0 win over
Cuba in their first group game. Joe Corona of Club Tijuana in Mexico scored a hattrick, while Juan
Agudelo, Freddy Adu, and an own goal rounded out the scoring against the Cubans. Cuba spent a
majority of the game down to 10 men after an early red card when Agudelo took an elbow to the face.
US Soccer officially announced their 20 man roster for the upcoming Olympic qualifiers in
Nashville, and potentially Kansas City. It's basically the same lineup that was named last week to
the US camp. The only difference is that Joshua Gatt was recalled by his club team, and was
replaced by Philadelphia defender, Sheanon Williams.
Carli Lloyd will be signing autographs ahead of Wednesday's Union game against Columbus. Gaddis
wins PST Team of the Week honors. Adu on not starting against RSL: "It is what it is." Power
rankings. FIFA ethics investigator to look into awarding of 2018 and 2022 WC hosting. More.
Of the two games this weekend, KC couldn't win the bigger of the two, but at least the traveling
fans didn't go home without seeing one win. The Swope Park Rangers took on the Chicago Fire this
morning in Chicago, and came away with a 3-1 win over the Fire. Three first half goals were enough
to see the Rangers to victory.
