Peter Vermes is tired of answering questions about Sporting KC’s striker. But we asked
Several days before Sporting Kansas City opens its MLS season in Atlanta, manager Peter Vermes walked into a corner room inside the team’s training facility for a news conference. He saw the first question coming.
How will Sporting adjust to playing without Alan Pulido, its starting striker and highest-paid player, whose knee injury will sideline him for the season before it even starts?
“This the last time I’m going to answer this question ...” Vermes began in reply.
In a form of coach-speak, Vermes went on to explain that he’s riding with the guys he’s got, not focusing on the ones he doesn’t, and that means opening the schedule Sunday with Khiry Shelton as his starting No. 9. Shelton, you might recall, scored three goals in 31 appearances a year ago.
Which warranted the question. Or at least I thought so — because I asked it an hour earlier.
A Sporting KC team with aspirations to move past its playoff pitfall of 2021 has anchored its boat to uncertainty at striker, and that’s worth exploring. So on Wednesday morning, I walked into Vermes’ office and asked the question he apparently wanted to stop talking about.
Aren’t you a little concerned about your situation at striker?
“You can’t sit here and say the team is always first and then be so focused on one guy,” Vermes replied. “It’s not like I write Pulido off. He’s here. He’s part of the team. But I gotta get the guys who are going to play — I gotta get them ready. Would I love for him to play? Darn right.
“But at the same time, I have a tremendous amount of confidence in Khiry. I think he helps our team immensely in so many ways that other people just don’t value, but I do.”
Sure, but obviously the primary objective of that position ...
“Is to score goals,” Vermes interrupted. “I know that.”
And Shelton hasn’t historically scored many for you.
“He hasn’t,” Vermes said. “I agree.”
But you’re not concerned about it.
“No, because he opens things up for the other guys,” Vermes said. “I’ve always said this — if you have three guys up front, let’s say one guy has to be your leading goal scorer and score like a true leading goal scorer.
“Does it matter which one it is?”
Well, no. But it applies some pressure to the players not quite as adequately positioned to score them. In that sense, Sporting KC is not actually anchoring its boat to Shelton at center-forward, but rather to Daniel Salloi and Johnny Russell on the wings.
They’re both coming off career years. Salloi shoved his name into the MLS Most Valuable Player conversation in 2021, scoring 16 goals and adding eight assists. Russell scored in seven straight games at one point, a club record, and finished with 15 goals and eight assists. That will work — if career years are replicated.
It might not be a coincidence that a bulk of their production in 2021 came with Shelton lined up at center forward. Shelton basically never stops moving when Sporting has the ball, and his motion often drags defenders with him, opening space elsewhere for a teammate. When Sporting doesn’t have possession, there are few strikers more capable or willing of serving as the tip of the defensive sphere.
In a nutshell, that’s Vermes’ case. He was actually pleasant when stating it, even if he’s grown tired of having to do so. Shortly after he did, I offered a theory. Generally speaking, it’s his nature to attempt to make the best of any situation, not just this one. He’s a next-step, look-ahead, what-do-I-have-to-do thinker, so perhaps without even realizing it, he needs to convince himself whatever plan he puts in place will be successful.
“There’s probably something to that,” he said.
But then he offered some evidence.
The Sporting KC staff keeps a log of statistics, just like any other professional sports franchise, but Vermes rates six of them highly. One is winning percentage. Does the team win when you’re on the field?
It’s not just matches. The information includes small-sided practice competition. To that, Vermes said Shelton rates “Really high. Really high.”
In practice. And in games. The latter numbers are available to us all. Sporting wins nearly two-thirds of its matches with Shelton as the starting No. 9. This might not be Plan A, but it’s one that’s worked in the past.
“I think it’s interesting when a stat validates what your decision is,” Vermes said. “Because that’s not always the case. Sometimes you go on feel and what your gut is telling you. That doesn’t always mean it’s right.”
Shelton is the choice, and Vermes is persuasive in his reasoning. It’s difficult to argue with the results Sporting generates when Shelton is atop the offensive formation. The question is whether it holds up over a full season.
The alternative options are limited anyway, given the mechanisms at play within MLS roster construction.
Sporting learned in December that Pulido’s aching knee would require offseason knee surgery. The operating doctors expressed shock he had attempted to play through the injury. Every week or two last season, Pulido was having somewhere between 30-40 milliliters of liquid removed from his knee. He turned down surgery then. Didn’t want to miss a playoff run.
But in those playoffs, an action in the game convinced him surgery was the answer. He collected the ball about 35-40 yards from goal with only one defender in front of him. On most occasions, he believed, he could blow by the defender and put the ball in the back of the net. On this one, he couldn’t push off the knee.
Time to get it fixed, he thought. Further testing indicated surgery as his best option, even if it would keep him out for the season.
Pulido is the most expensive investment in team history. His injury — which occurred during Mexican national team practice, not with Sporting KC — is not reason to classify the signing as a failure.
But it has placed Sporting KC in a tough spot. He is one of three designated players on the roster, the maximum number allowed per league rules. Even if he’s placed on season-long injured reserve — which Sporting doesn’t plan to do — the team can’t just sign his replacement at the same monetary figure.
All three designated players (Pulido, Russell and midfielder Gadi Kinda, whose transfer fee kicked him into designated player status) are under contract for next season. So if Sporting KC were to add another designated player, they’d essentially have to do it for just one season.
It just doesn’t make sense to use ownership funds to pay a transfer fee for a one-year rental. Sporting alternatively added Nikola Vujnovic on a one-year loan.
The plan is still for Shelton to operate as the starter.
Just ask Vermes.
Or, you know, maybe wait a little while.
This story was originally published February 25, 2022 at 10:05 AM.