Aurelien Collin says it will be ‘special’ to play against former club, Sporting KC

The reality slowly sank in sometime late in 2014, Aurelien Collin says, as Sporting Kansas City faded from an Eastern Conference contender into a club battling for its playoff lives.

A player soon to be out of a contract had made no progress on negotiations toward a new one, leading to a likely determination: An uneven season would be his final one in Kansas City.

“I knew that Kansas City wouldn’t offer me something that I would be happy with, so I was expecting to leave,” Collin said in a phone interview Friday. “It wasn’t a surprise for me to leave, but it was still very hard for me leave all my friends, my family, the fans, the stadium. It was very hard.”

Those memories have shifted to the foreground this week, with Collin’s old club, Sporting KC, slated to visit his new one, Orlando City SC, for a nationally-televised match at 6 p.m. Sunday. The game will be broadcast on Fox Sports 1.

It’s the only meeting this season between Sporting KC and Orlando City, an expansion club that entered the weekend in eighth place in the 10-team Eastern Conference.

“It will be special for me to play against them,” Collin said. “Kansas City is home for me. It will always be home for me, you know?

“The soccer stadium, Sporting Park, is an amazing stadium with amazing fans. We won the MLS Cup. It will always be in my heart.”

If the words sound familiar, well, they echo a sentiment expressed last month from Columbus Crew striker Kei Kamara, who played against his former teammates on Aug. 22.

Like Kamara, Collin’s first game against his former club won’t come at Sporting Park, though his next one should. Barring a change in the MLS scheduling protocol, Orlando City will make the return trip to Sporting Park next season, offering Collin a homecoming he said he hoped would come this season.

In actuality, he said he never wanted to depart Kansas City at all — provided the money was right.

Collin is making $525,000 with Orlando City, according to figures released by the MLS Players Union. That was too expensive for Sporting KC, which was set on giving Ike Opara a chance to be the starting center back anyway. And that decision appeared to be a wise one, considering the success Opara enjoyed before he suffered a ruptured Achilles’ tendon in April. Even in Opara’s absence, homegrown defender Kevin Ellis has been an adequate fill-in.

Add to that, Sporting KC received allocation money from Orlando City in exchange for Collin’s rights last offseason.

“We tried everything we could to do a new deal (with Collin), but as we’re trying to build a team for next year, it was going to be very difficult to accomplish based on what he was looking for in a contract,” Sporting KC coach Peter Vermes said after the trade in December.

The move transitioned Collin from a championship contender to an expansion club, and the latter has included some expected growing pains. Orlando City has allowed more goals (50) than any other team in the league.

“When I was in Kansas City, we built a great team in three years. Here, it’s a new beginning,” Collin said. “We have a lot of young players just beginning in the MLS. It’s a lot of work to build. You need some time.”

This story was originally published September 12, 2015 at 1:07 PM with the headline "Aurelien Collin says it will be ‘special’ to play against former club, Sporting KC."