Sporting KC’s offense is struggling mightily, but here’s one place team has options

Sporting Kansas City is anticipating being without Nicholas Isimat-Mirin for anywhere from 3-6 weeks after the central defender was subbed off in the fifth minute of last weekend’s game against the Columbus Crew.

Isimat-Mirin sustained a concussion and later had surgery for a broken cheekbone.

The injury, resulting from a reckless header attempt by Crew winger James Igbekeme, forced Sporting KC manager Peter Vermes’ hand very early in Saturday’s match. And his subsequent substitution says a lot about how he views his backline.

Given how Vermes had set up the team’s center-back pairing for the Columbus game — Ford on the right, Isi on the left — the logical choice to sub in would’ve been Andreu Fontas, who’d been supplanted in Saturday’s starting lineup by Kortne Ford.

Instead, Vermes chose to bring on Robert Voloder. And the choice worked out well. Sporting kept a clean sheet and Ford put in a performance worthy of his inclusion on the MLS Team of the Week.

Now Vermes is filling out his lineup sheet for this weekend’s home matchup with FC Dallas. And his next center-back pairing will be ... unknown, for a couple more days, anyway.

“I’m going to pick the guys I think are best for the game,” the SKC manager said. “The guys I think that can obviously get shutouts, guys that defend, guys that can keep goals out of the back of the net. That’s the most important thing.”

It’s simple math. The lower they can keep the opponent’s score, the better chance they have to win. In trying to read the tea leaves here about who will actually start, Kortne Ford and either Andreu Fontas or Robert Voloder appear to have the inside track for Saturday’s 7:30 p.m. game at Children’s Mercy Park.

It comes down to how Sporting utilizes its center-backs. Typically, Vermes wants a left-footed ball-playing defender on the left side of the pairing and a more physical and athletic defender on the right. His system functions most efficiently in this way, and frankly this is a system has been quite successful for a long time.

While Ford fits the mold of the right-side defender Vermes prefers, both Voloder and Fontas are suited to playing left center-back. Fontas was key in this role last season, and Voloder’s been impressive in training … and now he’s shown his stuff during live games, as well.

Sporting goalkeeper Tim Melia complimented Voloder’s poise last weekend in replacing Isimat-Mirin.

“He is a lot more comfortable for someone his age than you would think,” Melia said. “He’s down to rough it up a little bit, which is important, and he’s quality on the ball. I think that he’s only going to get better as he plays more games, and (he’s) someone that we’re looking forward to seeing more minutes out of.”

In the end, having two men capable of playing the same position at a high level is a good problem for Sporting KC. Some of this season’s injury situations have left Vermes with fewer concrete options. But that’s not the case here — Fontas is the proven veteran and Voloder is an up-and-comer who’s hungry prove he belongs.

Sporting KC needs more consistency than ever from the center-back spots with the the way the offense is struggling. As Vermes noted, the first step toward overall improvement is keeping the opponent’s ball out of the net.

If Sporting can do that, the rest should eventually start to fall in place, too.

“Everything else comes off of that,” Vermes said. “If we can do that, then we’ll get chances, and we’ll score goals and we’ll put ourselves in good positions. But we’ve gotta make sure that we keep the ball out of the back of the net.”

This story was originally published April 28, 2022 at 1:11 PM with the headline "Sporting KC’s offense is struggling mightily, but here’s one place team has options."