Was Sporting KC right to field young team for Leagues Cup? Let’s analyze pros and cons

Sporting Kansas City’s 6-1 loss to Club Leon in the Leagues Cup has caused ripples of the debate throughout U.S. Soccer over the last day or so.

On one side — largely made up of KC fans — is the argument that the Leagues Cup is a cash-grab between Major League Soccer and Mexico’s Liga MX that has created a meaningless tournament in an already jam-packed schedule.

Kansas City’s decision to play eight players who entered the game with five appearances or less this season was the right decision regardless of the result. Or so that thinking goes.

The other side laments KC’s lackadaisical approach to the tournament. It was a chance for Sporting KC to prove MLS’s progression over Liga MX and compete for an international trophy — something that has eluded all MLS clubs but DC United and the LA Galaxy.

Both sides have valid points ... and it’s because of this fact that Sporting KC and its coaching staff were put into such a difficult position Tuesday night.

Let’s start with the viewpoint that Kansas City should have taken the Leagues Cup seriously.

The Leagues Cup was created in 2019 to offer an alternative competition between MLS and Liga MX clubs that isn’t the Concacaf Champions League. It features the four best MLS teams and four best Liga MX teams that did not qualify for the CCL.

The whole tournament is held in the U.S., and each quarterfinal features one U.S. team and one Liga MX team, played in the American team’s stadium. That gave Sporting an excellent chance to defeat a solid Mexican team on home soil and advance to the semifinals against either New York City FC or Pumas UNAM.

After Sporting KC head coach Peter Vermes rolled out a young team against the Colorado Rapids on Saturday that didn’t feature veterans such as Graham Zusi, Daniel Salloi and Johnny Russell, the thought was that those players would be saved for Leon on Tuesday.

Come Tuesday, only Salloi made the starting lineup, and he was pulled at halftime. Instead, Vermes announced a lineup of largely USL and youth talent, including backup goalkeeper John Pulskamp and homegrowns Kaveh Rad, Ozzie Cisneros and Grayson Barner.

The 6-1 loss wasn’t surprising, and it’s not the players’ fault.

What is an issue is the fact that such an inexperienced squad was left for the dogs against a quality Liga MX team.

A multitude of major figures down the years at Sporting KC — Vermes, Zusi, Jimmy Nielsen, Matt Besler, Tim Melia, to name a few — have always said that the players and the club always left it out on the field for the fans.

The young players certainly did leave it all on the field, too, even if it wasn’t enough to overcome Leon. It was tough not to feel sorry for Barber, who resignedly said “we went out there and did the best that we could do” after the game.

But why weren’t the likes of Russell and Pulido in the starting lineup? Russell hasn’t featured in the last two games for Sporting KC while Pulido featured for just 30 minutes against Colorado.

That leads to the argument as to why it was a good decision for Sporting KC to disregard the game and therefore tournament.

Vermes said that he was unwilling to risk his players, and there’s certainly sincerity and reason behind that statement. The injury to Jaylin Lindsey early in the game, a player Vermes said he “counts on to play a lot of games,” gives credence to his point.

Sporting KC is in the midst of playing seven games in 22 days. Inside that stretch is four games in 11 days in four different cities. Rotation is necessary.

“I’m not sure what you guys think they are, but they’re all not supermen, that’s for sure,” Vermes said following the loss.

In the middle of a race for the top spot in the Western Conference and the Supporters Shield — something Sporting has won once before, in 2000 — Vermes is reasonable to focus on the chase for domestic glory.

The CCL campaign in the early stages of the 2019 season caused early fatigue and injuries for Sporting KC and dismantled the club’s campaign for the rest of the season. KC finished 11th in the West that year.

“I think at the end of the day that’s the decision I had to make,” Vermes said on Tuesday’s lineup. “If anybody wants to make a criticism to the team they can make it at me, I’ll take the blame on it. I’m the coach, no problem, bring it on and I’ll take it.”

Seattle’s 3-0 dismantling of Tigres UANL later Tuesday evening didn’t help Sporting’s cause. The Sounders decided to take the tournament seriously and fielded a full-strength squad that made light work of the 2020 CCL champions.

But Seattle isn’t in the middle of a brutal stretch of games. The Sounders’ last game was at home last Wednesday and they don’t play again until a short road trip to the Portland Timbers on Sunday.

They’re not in the same situation as Sporting KC. But now, if Seattle manages to make it to the final, they have a midweek game every week between now and Halloween, including during the FIFA international window.

That situation then shifts the blame to Major League Soccer: Why has the league created a new tournament with little regard for its own teams?

Vermes offered some suggestions following the game, suggesting a 10-day tournament from start to finish that would not be interjected by any domestic games.

Although that idea isn’t the most reasonable — the U.S. Open Cup is a similar knockout style tournament and has always been scattered throughout the season — it brings to the fore the notion that MLS needs to do a better job of protecting its teams.

The league has made little effort to work with its clubs to allow teams like Sporting to take the Leagues Cup seriously.

If MLS and Liga MX want teams to regularly put out full-strength teams and grow the competition, it needs to provide a proper schedule and domestic re-scheduling system for the teams involved.

MLS knew that KC was playing in this competition since March. Kansas City played just a single midweek game throughout May and had a two-and-a-half-week break in July due to the Gold Cup in Kansas City. Could MLS not have rescheduled some games to earlier in the season, or handed KC some road games when the Gold Cup was in KC?

Competing in as many competitions as possible is great for an organization. Success breeds success. But when teams are given as little help as possible in earning that success, and therefore growing the brand of MLS, it’s tough to blame coaches like Vermes for playing young guys against an opponent like Leon.

“I think it can be a great competition,” Vermes said. “I just think that there is a lot of different things that go into it. Unfortunately, when you pool the things together that I’ve already mentioned, it doesn’t give you the flexibility to do what you want to do.”

This story was originally published August 12, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Was Sporting KC right to field young team for Leagues Cup? Let’s analyze pros and cons."