Sporting KC’s new manager was sidelined until this week. Now he’s back in action
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Wicky recently received his P‑1 visa and rejoined Sporting KC during preseason.
- Wicky designs training, tactics and the team's 'DNA' during preseason.
- Sporting KC currently has 20 players under contract, creating roster concerns.
For nearly three weeks, Raphael Wicky had been Sporting KC’s head coach without actually getting to be the head coach. Welcome to the world of the visa process.
Wicky, who was announced as Sporting KC’s head coach on Jan. 5, did not yet have his P-1 visa, which would allow him to work in the United States. In fact, he hadn’t received it as of last Thursday.
Two days later, he was able to be on the sidelines for Sporting’s final match of its first phase of the preseason.
“You want to be here every single day,” Wicky said. “You want to talk to the players and work with them. … I’m very happy that this time is over, that I now have my visa and can work with the players and with the staff every single day.”
Wicky said he stayed in communication with the staff on-site. Assistant coach Edu Rubio was also working on getting his P-1 visa, so day-to-day duties mostly fell to staffers who weren’t going through that process.
Those staffers included Roger Espinoza and Ash Wallace, who were part of the coaching staff last year, and newly added assistant Dominic Kinnear.
“It was for me to give the message to the staff of what we want to achieve in terms of culture, what we want to build, and in terms of football, the soccer we want to see,” Wicky said. “Obviously, I was still able to design the training sessions and the exercises and topics I wanted them to work on.”
Phase two of the preseason is underway in Palm Springs, California, with Sporting’s first Coachella Valley Invitational match against Minnesota United set for Saturday afternoon. Wicky can now work hands-on with players and staff to continue implementing his style of play and what he called “the DNA we want to have on the field.”
Sporting will play three games in the next week, with matches on Wednesday, Feb. 11, and the following Saturday, Feb. 14. Wicky said the final score of those games will not be a measuring stick of whether the team has progressed.
Instead, Sporting will be distributing minutes to the players that need them most. And that could include altered game plans with the team, at times, working through double training sessions the day before matches.
“Those are all things you don’t do during the season,” Wicky said. “That’s why the results are the results. We want to win. We don’t like to lose. But that cannot be my way of evaluating how the performance is.”
So what will he measure this preseason?
“It’s (whether) the team is putting in place what we train every day, what we want to be, in terms of in possession, out of possession, transition phases,” Wicky said, “… and then there is a result coming out of that.”
Part of the equation in evaluating this team is understanding the roster situation.
SKC currently has 20 players under contract, and only 16 are outfield players. It’s far from an ideal situation, with more bodies needed to field a competitive team. But it’s part of the process Wicky said he signed on for.
“David was always transparent,” Wicky said, referencing general manager David Lee. “Everything else is not under my control.”
He continued.
“I’m really not thinking every night about, ‘Oh, I wish we had like seven, eight or six other players here,’” Wicky said. “I’m very focused on what we have here. My job is ... to try to make these players better, to give them my full attention, and that’s what I’m doing.
“I really trust David and his team that they will sign us these players. I’m not trying to lose too much energy on that.”
Daniel Sperry covers soccer for The Star. He can be reached at sperry.danielkc@gmail.com.