Sporting KC looked different in 1st game without Peter Vermes. So what changed?

Sporting Kansas City finally won a game in 2025, and it came at the expense of its biggest rival.

An emotional 2-0 win over St. Louis City SC on Saturday brought out Sporting’s best performance this season.

Dejan Joveljic earned MLS Team of the Week honors for his two-goal performance. Manu Garcia made the bench, and Kerry Zavagnin — named interim coach after Peter Vermes’ departure — was named coach of the week.

But it wasn’t just the emotion that brought about the result. There were three key adjustments that changed how Sporting played Saturday.

All three made a difference.

Feeding Dejan Joveljic

Dejan Joveljic pulled out quite a few celebrations after his second goal. From mimicking Daniel Salloi’s famed Joker face — how Salloi celebrated the series-clinching goal in front of St. Louis supporters in the 2023 MLS Cup playoffs — to blowing out the smoke from his finger pistols.

But the third and final one was symbolic, the universal sports “feed me” celebration, like he’s spooning Cheerios into his mouth. Joveljic got fed in the second half of Sporting KC’s win over St. Louis.

In Sporting’s 2-1 loss the previous week, Joveljic only had three touches inside the box. Khiry Shelton and Jake Davis, two non-forwards, had more touches inside the opponent’s penalty area. Joveljic doubled that number against St. Louis.

Sporting also found him more. Coming into the game, Joveljic was averaging 16 passes received per match. He received 26 passes against St. Louis.

The only other match where Joveljic received more passes than that was against San Jose, when Sporting neared 70% possession. He hasn’t received more than 20 passes in any game except those two.

Abandoning the hopeful cross

Joveljic thrives on passes that send him into the penalty area, or toward it while facing the goal. He’s not the type of striker like William Agada who thrives on crosses to showcase his aerial prowess.

In Sporting’s previous three games, the team surpassed 20 crosses attempted, including totals of 33 (2-1 loss to Dallas) and 42 (2-0 loss to LAFC). On Saturday? Only 14 crosses were attempted, and 10 of them came in the first 45.

“I don’t think more crosses gives you more opportunity to score, especially where you deliver the crosses from,” Zavagnin said. “I’d like to think of (crosses) more as targeted passes.”

The second goal, according to Zavagnin, was an example of it.

“There were spaces that we thought we could exploit,” Zavagnin said. “And I think on the second goal we found that area.”

On that second goal ... as Erik Thommy dribbled down the right sideline in the attacking third and turned toward the box, Joveljic positioned himself at the near post. The threat of Thommy cutting back to dribble toward the end line forced the St. Louis back line to drop deeper, opening up space.

That space opened near the penalty spot. Thommy didn’t have to cross the ball, but rather played a driven cutback pass from the wide area into the path of Manu Garcia, who had made a late run.

Garcia’s shot, of course, was saved onto the crossbar, but Joveljic scored the rebound. That’s the type of targeted pass that Zavagnin wants to see leading to chances on goal.

Concerted effort to play through the middle

One of the things Zavagnin diagnosed as an issue for Sporting last week was that the team was getting the ball into the final third, but not creating enough quality in the final moment.

An over-reliance on lumping in crosses to create chances will do that. But as Sporting avoided the cross in the second half, it also played through the middle much more.

Passes that advance the ball a minimum of 10 yards toward the goal and come within the attacking 60% of the field are counted as progressive passes

According to FBRef, Sporting’s top-5 totals for progressive passes received come from players who have primarily played in wide positions: Daniel Salloi, Shapi Suleymanov, Logan Ndenbe, Erik Thommy and Jake Davis.

Manu Garcia is sixth, with only 25 such passes received.

It’s been clear the team’s plan was to progress the ball down the wings. Only once in the team’s previous six matches did a midfielder crack the top 5 in progressive passes received.

On Saturday, that changed.

Garcia slotted inside the top 5 in progressive passes received for the first time while also leading the team in progressive passes played. Davis made the top 5, as did Joveljic, meaning the three most advanced centrally located players were the ones receiving the passes forward.

With Garcia receiving more of the progressive passes while also delivering many of them, he was in a better spot to feed the ball forward to Joveljic.

“Manu, we brought him here for a reason,” Zavagnin said. “We knew he was good through the middle and he could deliver the final pass, but you have to set the game up for him to be able to deliver that.”