Sporting KC erupts for 5 goals in highlight-filled win over San Jose Earthquakes
A stunning six-minute stretch saw Sporting Kansas City take a three-goal lead inside the first 25 minutes of Saturday’s MLS match against the San Jose Earthquakes, a wild 5-3 SKC win that went late into the night.
But the same old mistakes showed up in crucial moments as the game went to halftime at 3-2.
In last week’s 4-2 loss to Portland, Sporting KC came out flat in the second half, and it proved costly.
“I think they learned their lessons,” interim head coach Kerry Zavagnin said. “Last week was a difficult pill to swallow for us. But credit to the guys (today).”
Zavagnin spoke to the players at halftime, but he said the messages between the players were just as important in keeping the intensity up.
“They were determined to think about the key moments of the game and to start the second half in a much better way,” Zavagnin said.
Daniel Salloi put in a man-of-the-match performance with two goals and two assists. Afterward, he said the players didn’t want to get their heads down about some of the mistakes they had made.
“Especially against a team like San Jose, you’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to get scored on,” Salloi said. “We just have to always stay in the game and keep playing our game. That’s what we did.”
And then some.
Sporting’s defense picked up in the second half, and the club regained control. Salloi scored his second goal of the match in the 73rd minute. Erik Thommy added another in the 84th to secure Sporting’s road win on the West Coast.
The victory marked the first road win for Sporting since July 13, 2024, when the club defeated the San Jose Earthquakes 2-1. It’s also the first time Sporting KC has scored five goals since a 7-1 victory over the Montreal Impact on March 30, 2019.
Logan Ndenbe got the party started in the 18th minute, firing a shot home from a tight angle after a nifty pass from Dejan Joveljic.
Then, goalkeeper John Pulskamp got an assist — you read that right — on his birthday with a heads-up long restart to Salloi. Salloi’s touch and finish made it 2-0.
“I wanted to celebrate with him, but what is he doing?” Salloi joked. “As a goalkeeper, if I’m giving an assist, I’m sprinting up the field. He just stayed in the goal. He said he didn’t want to get tired.”
Pulskamp is the sixth goalkeeper in club history to record an assist, and the first to do so since 2005.
“He played an amazing ball, and I made a good run,” Salloi said. “And I’m very happy for him that I could score that goal (since) that gives him an assist.”
Minutes later, a counterattack resulted in a perfectly placed pass from Shapi Suleymanov to Manu Garcia for his first MLS goal.
But the Earthquakes clawed back. Some set-piece issues and a lack of clearances stifled Sporting over the final 20 minutes of the first half, and San Jose got two goals back.
Josef Martinez finished off a perfect pass in behind and Chicho Arango’s header made it 3-2.
Sporting found some moments of control in the second half and finally got a foothold in the game again. With the substitution of Thommy and Zorhan Bassong at the hour mark, Sporting started to settle in with fresher legs.
Thommy played provider 13 minutes later with a low, driven cross into the run of Salloi for a simple finish to make it 4-2. About 10 minutes later, Thommy scored the fifth goal off a pass from Garcia.
Arango scored a penalty kick late in stoppage time to make it 5-3, but the result was already settled by then.
Sporting improved to 2-6-1 in MLS regular-season play, winning its second match of 2025.
Up next: Sporting KC heads east to Cincinnati for its next match, kicking off at 1:30 p.m. next Saturday.
Daniel Sperry covers soccer for The Star. He can be reached at sperry.danielkc@gmail.com.
This story was originally published April 20, 2025 at 12:17 AM.