Sporting KC appears to have lost its way, and it’s up to coach Peter Vermes to fix it
Before disappearing into the locker room, Sporting Kansas City manager Peter Vermes is on the field questioning his team’s courage. He is publicly calling out its mentality in a manner few coaches would do on live television, going so far as to say if it does not change — and change soon — some players will need to find a new place to play.
About 50 yards away, captain Johnny Russell is walking with purpose toward a group of fans in the stands who are chanting their own displeasure — and then Russell is stepping over the billboards for a more intimate verbal confrontation. Teammates would need to pull him away.
In this one sequence Saturday, Sporting KC absorbed the features of a team that lost its way — and that’s after it lost the lead and then lost the match.
So, what now?
How do they re-discover themselves?
Those are the questions that opened a conversation with Vermes a few days later.
“When the team is really flying and getting results, honestly, I could probably take a few days off,” Vermes said. “Now, this is where I have to earn my stripes.”
Sporting KC is not very good at the moment, and that itself is intriguing because it’s not a sentence we’ve used often. A franchise that has reached the playoffs in 10 of the past 11 seasons has begun to frustrate some fans who want the playoff results to match the regular-season output.
This year, they might get their wish.
Sporting is 2-5; they’ve yet to earn even a point on the road; and they’ve not scored more than one goal in any of their seven matches. They’ve not looked like a group ready to fight for the postseason mix, let alone the one that nearly finished atop the West a year ago.
It’s mid-April, early enough that we can say it’s still early, but the worst of this has nothing to do with the numbers. Sporting looks like a team without confidence because, frankly, it is a team without confidence. Some of its players, as Vermes even notes, have no idea what it’s like to dominate a match here in Kansas City. From where would their confidence derive?
This all goes hand-in-hand — the conviction to make a play and the part that irks Vermes most. The part that prompted him to vent his frustration in a post-game TV interview. They have broken one of Vermes’ non-negotiables. He alluded to it Saturday, after Nashville marched onto Sporting’s home field and escaped with a 2-1 comeback win.
Asked to elaborate this week, Vermes said he spotted moments in which guys played passively — where they were unwilling to make the play if it did not fall into their individual assignment.
“I know I can be demanding, but I’m not unrealistic,” Vermes said. “Guys are going to make a mistake — they’re going to miss a pass or miss a shot or get beat on a dribble. I know things are going to happen.
“For the life of me, I cannot tolerate when you’re afraid to do it — and then you make a mistake or you’re afraid to do something because you don’t want to put yourself in that position. I have no time for that.”
That is internally solved, potentially with the snap of the fingers if they’re up for making the change, but the broader picture will not be such a quick fix.
It’s fair to wonder if all of the answers are currently on the roster. Sporting KC has lacked creativity in the final third, and injured star striker Alan Pulido is not walking onto that field anytime soon (or likely at all this year), and midfielder Gadi Kinda is still probably a month away. The injuries to the team’s designated players have had a real effect, but that’s not going away.
Which means this group will have to figure it out. And that’s where Vermes’ influence matters most. Where, as he put it, he will earn his stripes. Confidence can be coached — it can be instilled — but it’s a gradual process. Vermes spent the initial couple of days this week talking to staff and a few players individually. There were a few things he needed to clear up, he said.
He has coached teams through losing streaks; he does not often coach ones without at least a foundation of confidence. When the skid arrives late in the season, he can at least point back to some place earlier in the schedule as a reference point. Here, he must use training.
It’s unfamiliar. It’s uncomfortable. It can be delicate.
After those initial conversations with players this week, he made a point to move on to the preparations for Los Angeles FC on Sunday night in a nationally televised game. It’s hard to build a confident team if you’re exclusively focused on what went wrong.
“You gotta keep a calmness,” Vermes said. “If we lose and every time, I go off on the team; and then when we win, I ask you to go out to lunch; and then we lose and I don’t talk to you all week long — that would be a completely wrong way to act. I can’t be with you when it’s good and against you when it’s not good.”
Asked directly if this team is good enough to reach the expectations he had envisioned before the season, Vermes answered affirmatively. The effort and confidence had been there prior to Saturday, and ironically, he pointed to a loss to prove his point. In the team’s season opener in Atlanta, the Sporting players gave too much effort too soon. He takes the blame for that. Maybe he hyped up that match too much (it was the season opener, after all).
At least he knows the mentality can be there.
If Vermes is right — if this group is indeed capable of reaching the playoffs, like 10 of its 11 predecessors — it’s on him to find it. On him to restore their confidence.
Those aren’t just my words.
His, too.
“I guess you get paid to create the good times, but it’s not about managing during those good times that’s difficult,” Vermes said. “I think most know it’s all the other times that you really have to get to work.
“You can’t bury them. I’m not walking away from them saying, ‘You guys don’t know what you’re doing and it’s all your fault.’ That’s not what this is.
“My first response all the time is the same: What am I doing?