Sporting KC: Player’s COVID test was a false-positive result. He has returned to camp

After months of quarantine, social distancing and meticulous workout plans, Sporting Kansas City was braced to learn that it had its first positive case of COVID-19 on its hands.

Not so fast, not yet: This one turned out to be a “false positive,” the club confirmed on Friday.

Manager Peter Vermes on Thursday reported one “unconfirmed” positive test result. He said then that the team was awaiting results of a second lab test so it could be sure — club protocol for verifying a positive involves obtaining a second result from a different lab.

The second test came back negative. The person tested was a player, according to a team official.

“Protocol suggests that you have to go test the player again, and one of the things that we actually went with is that we think that it’s important that when you do the next test, you actually do it with a different lab,” Vermes said Thursday. “So it’s completely separate from the one that you’ve done it with.”

Sporting KC leaves Sunday for the MLS is Back tournament in Orlando. Sporting’s first match is July 12 against Minnesota United.

FC Dallas and Colombus, two teams already stationed inside the Orlando “bubble” wherein the tournament’s games will be played, have each had players test positive for COVID — nine and one cases, respectively.

Players who test positive for the virus during the tourney were to be quarantined in a designated wing of the hotel in Orlando, separated from the rest of the MLS population.

Vermes knows the state to which he and his team are headed is a hotbed for the virus. Florida has been reporting more than 10,000 new cases of the virus daily of late.

“I personally don’t have any (hesitations), and my pulse on the team right now and the staff, nobody has any trepidation of going down there,” Vermes said.

“We’re looking forward to going down there and starting the tournament,” captain Matt Besler said. “There are some things that we don’t know how they’re going to play out yet. We’re hearing certain things from the teams that are already down there.

“But I’d say our group is a very competitive group, and we’re really looking forward to the chance at competing and starting to play meaningful games.”

One of Besler’s sources for information inside the bubble has been former SKC teammate Seth Sinovic, now with the New England Revolution.

Besler said that Sinovic has been in touch with him, sending him pictures of the hotel. Food has also been a major talking point for players and fans after Toronto FC defender Omar Gonzalez tweeted out a picture of a meal sent to his room.

The breakfast, which was priced at $45, included a sandwich, banana and some pre-cut strawberries.

“Any of the kinks, any of the things that they didn’t think of, other teams have to go through that and hopefully those guys pick it up and fix it and we get down there and don’t even have to see that there was a problem,” Vermes said.

Sporting has been game-planning how to approach the potential four-week tournament. For example, performance centers at the hotel have just three time slots per day available, due to the time it takes to disinfect the entire center and then let it sit before another team is allowed in.

To combat that, Kansas City is sending down a pod of its own equipment, which will be set up in a designated ballroom for KC players to use.

“It’s kind of the NFL team going away for preseason — I said this when I first took over as coach,” Vermes said. “I spent some time looking at NFL teams before I took on the technical director job (with Sporting), and I was always impressed that a lot of NFL teams are like a military operation.

“It’s something that I adopted many, many years ago and we’ve done that for every preseason. So it’s really old hat for our staff to be self-sufficient.”

This story was originally published July 2, 2020 at 9:09 PM with the headline "Sporting KC: Player’s COVID test was a false-positive result. He has returned to camp."