Sporting KC has a crazy seven weeks ahead. And some unique preparations for it all
Before Sporting Kansas City embarked on the 2019 preseason, the team gathered inside a Phoenix complex, and coach Peter Vermes outlined the next seven weeks. During his tenure, it’s become customary to provide the players a sense of the process and the meaning behind it.
This one took some time.
The itinerary calls for a busy two months, with Sporting KC participating in two different competitions — the CONCACAF Champions League and the opening of the MLS season, in that order. The club will have made eight trips by the time it completes the opening week of the league’s season in early March.
Phoenix. Kansas City. Back to Phoenix. Back to Kansas City. Albuquerque, N.M. Toluca, Mexico. Los Angeles. And back to Kansas City once more. All in seven weeks’ time.
“It’s a challenge for all of us and something we have to figure out how to manage, but we have a plan,” Vermes said. “I think the players are up for it. They’re excited. Whatever word you want to use — fresh, new, challenging — it’s something they haven’t faced before. And you add in some new players to the mix, and there’s some hunger there.”
Vermes mapped out the preseason arrangements throughout last year, finalizing the details during Sporting KC’s playoff run.
The team will spend the first three weeks in Phoenix, playing three scrimmages of varying lengths before returning to Kansas City on Jan. 31. After five days home — three days off for the players and two practice sessions — the club flies back to Phoenix to complete preseason with two more scrimmages dates.
Sporting comes back to Kansas City for its CONCACAF Champions League series opener against Deportivo Toluca FC on Feb. 21 at Children’s Mercy Park. Two days later, after a morning training session at Pinnacle, they will travel to Albuquerque and practice there for a few days.
The reason? Albuquerque will better prepare the players for the altitude of their next match — Feb. 28 in Toluca for the return leg of the CCL competition. The altitude in Toluca is 8,750 feet. “I want us to have a sense of what that’s going to be like, because opening the season with that is going to be difficult,” Vermes said.
After the game in Mexico, Sporting KC flies straight to Los Angeles for its MLS opener on March 3. Then back to Kansas City for its MLS home opener on March 10.
Well, maybe. Actually, if Sporting KC survives the two-leg series against Toluca, it will travel for another CCL game before its league home opener.
“It’s a heck of a turnaround,” Vermes said. “We’ll be busy.”
To better prepare for the congested workload, which arrives earlier than usual thanks to the CCL involvement, Vermes petitioned the league and was granted approval to begin practice in early January.
With the team already in Phoenix, he’s departing from the usual preseason blueprint. Rather than settling on a starting and reserve group during the scrimmages, he plans to split his roster into two groups. They will receive equal minutes during the exhibition matches, which will essentially be structured as two games.
Each set will play 30 minutes in the exhibition opener Friday against Arizona Sahuaros, then 45 minutes the following match, a full hour in the third game, 75 minutes in the fourth and 90 minutes in the fifth.
“It won’t be an A team and a B team — just two teams playing regularly in the exact same progression,” Vermes said. “The objective is we go deep into the tournament, we have to have two teams playing. I can’t load up the team right away. We’re going to have to really manage and be strategic about how we do this.”
This story was originally published January 16, 2019 at 12:37 PM with the headline "Sporting KC has a crazy seven weeks ahead. And some unique preparations for it all."