Peter Vermes acknowledges Sporting Kansas City’s rebuild, but also shares this message

The calendar for Sporting Kansas City’s start to the 2025 season has been unusual, to say the least. Saturday is the team’s home opener in MLS regular-season play, but it’ll be its fourth competitive match.

And the team is still in search of its first win.

As Sporting KC has preached about the need for growth and a rebuild, there’s also some talk of patience with the current group — while the club expects to be competitive in 2025.

Sporting may not look like a top-4 team in conference, but the hope is that the 2025 squad will be a playoff team, at minimum, even if it takes some time to get rolling.

Sporing has nine new players this season, including three new faces up front that were brought in for $9 million and three academy products under the age of 20.

A trio of the club’s most recognizable faces remain: Jake Davis, Daniel Salloi and Erik Thommy.

It’ll be a delicate balance for manager Peter Vermes and sporting director Mike Burns, who are hoping for patience from supporters while still expecting to grow and compete in 2025.

In an interview with The Star, Vermes outlined some of the growth he expects to take place.

Sporting KC’s relentless attack

Looking back on the 2024 season, scoring goals was never a problem. Sporting scored 51 goals in MLS play (fifth-highest league total in club history) and 65 in all competitions.

Sporting could find its way into the back of the net, but never seemed to consistently put teams under pressure. In the aftermath of last season, Vermes used the word relentless to describe how he wanted his teams to play.

It’s a word he used to characterize a 25-minute spell in the first half of the team’s 3-1 loss to Inter Miami on Tuesday night. The contrast to how the team failed to keep the ball in a 1-0 road loss to Austin days prior was not lost on Vermes.

“We were very organized (in Austin),” Vermes said. “What we didn’t do was we weren’t good on the ball. If you look at us in the last game, we were very good on the ball.”

That was largely due to a shift in personnel. All three marquee signings ahead of the season started and played for the first 60 minutes on Tuesday. In Austin, they came on for the second half.

And while Vermes pointed out the defensive mistakes on Tuesday and how they changed the outcome of the game against Miami …

“You can’t deny the chances and the creation in the short period of time that these guys have been together,” Vermes said. “And I know it falls at times on deaf ears. But that’s what you need. You need positive progress.”

The word relentless could also apply to the mentality of that group of attackers — to not quit pushing for a goal at 3-0 down. Sporting’s attack still put Miami under pressure, treating the game as if it were 0-0. And the substitutes that came in did the same, eventually scoring a goal.

“We were still controlling that half of the game,” Vermes said. “And I think that’s really important.”

Defensive growth

Sporting KC’s defense was leaky (to say the least) in 2024, and that roster group mostly stays the same.

Joaquin Fernandez and Logan Ndenbe each played fewer than 300 minutes last season. They figure to be heavily in the mix this year.

But by and large, there will be players — who didn’t exactly shine in 2024 — who get a fair amount of minutes this season. Going back to Tuesday night, Vermes pointed at the goals conceded in first-half stoppage time.

“The two goals that we gave up at the end of the first half … we have to eliminate those types (of goals),” Vermes said.

Some of those plays involved players simply making a wrong decision. If mistakes continue, Vermes says changes will come.

“If that doesn’t get better with someone, then that’s going to be reflected also in the lineup,” Vermes said.

Those two goals were the team’s first two big defensive missteps of the year.

Prior to them, Sporting had conceded three times: Two of the goals could be attributed to Lionel Messi’s greatness. Another may not have happened if Dany Rosero didn’t slip while cutting on the rain-soaked surface in Austin.

Vermes also doesn’t want the progress being made on the pitch to be ignored by honing in on those mistakes. He believes Sporting’s defensive organization was sound for large stretches of all three games, which was part of the platform that allowed Sporting to attack so relentlessly at times against Miami.

Each time the ball exited the attacking third, a Sporting player won it right back and recycled the pressure and possession.

There’s also a mental side at play.

In a Leagues Cup match in Columbus last year, Sporting played well for some 40 minutes. But a mistake and goal conceded just before halftime opened the floodgates. Columbus then shredded Sporting for the remaining 45 minutes and won 4-0.

The way the first half ended on Tuesday could’ve snowballed into that again. But it didn’t. Sporting shut out Miami over the final 45 minutes and even got a goal back.

“We won the second half,” Vermes said. “And for us to do that shows a different mentality and attitude than we had a year ago.”

Developing the youth

Sporting KC’s average age — weighted by game time — was 28.6 last season, making the lineup the fourth-oldest in MLS. The 2025 roster’s current average is 25.4. It’s a trend toward youth, which means the younger players are going to get more opportunities to play.

That’s part of the growth that needs to happen in 2025. The expectations for players like 17-year-old goalkeeper Jack Kortkamp and 16-year-old defender Ian James will be different from that of midfielder Jacob Bartlett, who is 19.

James and Kortkamp will likely see more opportunity with Sporting KC II than the first team. But in the times when either gets an opportunity, Vermes wants to see growth.

“I’m hoping we’re going to see improvement, more comfort,” Vermes said. “(I want to see) each time they play, they start setting the bar for themselves.”

Bartlett is a different case. The 19-year-old has started as the team’s lone defensive midfielder in each of the club’s three games so far. He went 90 minutes on Wednesday and put in arguably the best performance on the team.

He completed 64 of 65 attempted passes, got the assist on Memo Rodriguez’s goal and made 14 passes into the final third. Bartlett completed 7 of 8 long balls played, was only dispossessed once and made seven ball recoveries.

All that in the midfield against Inter Miami in his third game as a pro.

“That was a different level,” Vermes said. “Anybody who’s on the outside, really watching, really paying attention, he was excellent.”

Just months ago Bartlett was playing college ball for Notre Dame.

“Already, his progress has been huge,” Vermes added.

Balancing patience and competitiveness

Sporting director Mike Burns, Vermes and players have preached patience. The word rebuild has been thrown around willingly, a candid admittance that the roster needed a reset after a period of down years in comparison to the success the club was synonymous with.

There’s no way around it: This is a rebuild.

“If I say that we’re in a rebuild … we are in a rebuild. Why would I lie about that?” Vermes said. “But that doesn’t mean that you don’t still have a desire to win or make the playoffs.”

Vermes and Burns’ honesty with the fact the club sees this period as a rebuild isn’t coupled with a lack of desire to compete.

“It’s not that you lose your competitiveness,” Vermes said. “It actually, at times, makes you more competitive.”

Understandably, fans want to see results right away. Some MLS teams have attempted to rebuild without investment, and somehow fallen face-first into the playoffs. It’s a league where it doesn’t take much.

You don’t have to be in the top-half of your conference to make the postseason. Just don’t be one of the six teams that miss it. The league is also set up so that it doesn’t always matter how you start, but it certainly matters how you finish.

“We want to try and make the playoffs,” Vermes said. “We want to go as deep as we can. We want to try to win MLS Cup. And that’s not going to change.”

Daniel Sperry covers soccer for The Star. He can be reached at sperry.danielkc@gmail.com.

This story was originally published February 27, 2025 at 12:23 PM.