Lionel Messi scores in KC, but this Sporting season rests on something we didn’t see
The best soccer player in the world stood near midfield on a pitch in Kansas City, occupying a stadium that didn’t yet exist by the time many felt comfortable calling him the best player in the world, and his teeth were literally chattering in the cold.
You couldn’t help but wonder what Lionel Messi might have been thinking.
This isn’t what I signed up for.
But it is.
That’s the thing.
Well, sure, he probably didn’t sign up for a 5-degree game in February, but Lionel Messi determined, weather be damned, shivering be damned, a game in Kansas City was important enough to tough it out.
He did a little more than that. Messi scored the lone goal, a pretty spectacular individual effort, in Miami’s 1-0 win against Sporting KC in the first of a two-leg series in the Concacaf Champions Cup.
“There’s one guy that can turn the game over,” Sporting manager Peter Vermes said. “And he did.”
There’s a sense of pride, city and league alike, that he did it in this environment, that he did it in a town that nearly lost its soccer franchise — and that wasn’t all that long ago, by the way.
But that was last year’s story.
This needs to be all about Sporting from here. And if you’re looking for the way-too-early-evaluation, well, the most important evaluation rests on what we didn’t see Wednesday night at Children’s Mercy Park.
A little more than an hour into the match, Sporting opted for three substitutions in one window. Among others, on to the field sprinted midfielder Manu Garcia for his club debut. Among others, to the bench jogged Dejan Joveljic, the two passing like ships in the night.
But this season — the success of this rebuild — will require they be anchors.
It’s all about what they can do together.
Sporting KC, the 13th-best team in a 14-team Western Conference last season, has hitched its ride to the partnership between Joveljic, its new striker to replace Alan Pulido, and Garcia, an attacking midfielder who replaces, well, no one, really.
It’s an upgrade.
A significant one.
Sporting acquired Joveljic, 25, on Feb. 1, just a month after transferring out 33-year-old Pulido. For all of the conversation late last year analyzing how quickly Sporting KC might be able to shuffle the chairs — or even Vermes praising the way his team played Wednesday — a swap at striker, a swap in the mentality at striker, transcends everything else. Joveljic appears to have a desire to push toward the goal. Imagine that. His effort is refreshing.
But his maximum value, his relevance, is dependent on the setup.
On Garcia.
They represent the newest era of Sporting KC.
They need to represent some new results, too.
Nobody wants to hear this, I recognize, but it might be a slow burn. The two have practiced together for less than a half-week. It’s not a snap-of-the-finger connection. It might be a few weeks. It might be a month. There’s perpetual impatience in sports of all sorts, though let’s not act as though Sporting KC is coming off a superb season. Even a patient fan would be tapping his or her foot.
It’s time.
Past time, even.
“You can see the future of it,” Vermes said. “The future is not years away. It’s pretty close.”
There will be ample opportunity to judge the accuracy of that remark soon enough.
But let’s be honest here: It’s at least something different. There were individual moments, even if not in tandem, that offered intrigue. Their resumes do, too.
But the point is this is not a team simply running it back, adding a piece here or there and hoping for some internal improvement. An honest assessment, at long last, illustrated the obvious: It would require an overhaul.
These two players are on the other end of that overhaul. More players, too. And Sporting KC has another depth piece it plans to announce in the next week, I’m told.
But it’s been a minute since Sporting KC’s attack garnered enough respect that it prompted an opposing defense to retreat.
“They’re in the game. They want the ball. Their movement is always in relationship to go to goal,” Vermes said. “That’s the difference.”
Two weeks after Joveljic’s arrival, Sporting KC added Garcia. But Sporting informed Joveljic of the likelihood shortly after he landed in Kansas City, and almost immediately, he pulled open his phone and began searching.
Highlight videos, sure. But he watched full matches, even taking notes, to develop a scouting report of his own.
Joveljic’s first impression — to teammates and media alike — is a cordial teammate but one of few words. When I asked him what he expected from his connection with Garcia, he initially shrugged.
“It’s early,” he said.
Sure, but those videos. What does your scouting report show?
He smiled.
“I like him,” he said.
This story was originally published February 20, 2025 at 6:00 AM.