It’s been a long, frustrating season of change for Sporting Kansas City, one that’s seen them below the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs line all year and now simply playing spoiler down the stretch.
They did a good job of that last week with a thrilling 4-2 win over the Colorado Rapids. This week’s matchup? A battle with suddenly high-scoring Austin FC on Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire (7 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+).
La Verde have figured things out in the attack over the past two months – or so it seems anyway, with multiple goals scored in five of their last six outings. They’ve exhibited a level of attacking output that had eluded them for almost the entire season up to that point.
And now they’ve just about punched their postseason ticket, which would mark just the second playoff appearance in club history. A win wouldn’t clinch it mathematically, but they’d be right on the precipice.
Sporting Kansas City
- One of the heroes of LA Galaxy’s run to last year’s MLS Cup, center forward Dejan Joveljić, has been the one true bright spot for Sporting this year. He’s got 16g/2a in league play, and he’s been worth every penny they spent on him last winter.
- Winger Dániel Sallói is one of the last remaining links to (some of) Sporting’s glory days. He’s been in KC nearly a decade and is having another fine season (7g/4a) while climbing the team’s all-time goals and appearances charts.
- SKC’s central defense has been a mess for most of the 2020s, and so it should be no surprise that new faces are getting long looks. One of those should be Alán Montes, who was acquired on loan (with a purchase option) from Necaxa this summer. He’s played just 13 minutes thus far, but this weekend seems as good a time as any to throw him into the deep end.
Austin FC
- With Myrto Uzuni unavailable due to international duty with Albania and Brandon Vazquez hurt, it’s going to have to be a “next man up” situation for Austin at center forward. And that means it’s likely veteran Diego Rubio – a very, very different player from either of the above guys – who’s probably going to get the nod.
- Winger Osman Bukari has struggled since he arrived mid-summer last year and has rarely been a 90-minute player. That’s changed recently, though, and he had probably his single best performance for Austin in their huge 3-1 win over San Jose last weekend.
- Young Owen Wolff has been Austin’s best field player this season (it’s goalkeeper Brad Stuver who’s been their best player overall… again). For much of the year, that meant playing as an inverted left midfielder in a 4-4-2, but recently it’s been more as an inverted, playmaking winger in a 4-3-3, and he’s produced some excellent moments.
Interim head coach Kerry Zavagnan has had a massive task in replacing the man he’d assisted for nearly 600 games, Peter Vermes. He’s come in and done what he could to shake things up, giving more chances to the likes of 2025 MLS SuperDraft pick Jansen Miller and homegrown d-mid Jacob Bartlett, and has now given multiple starts to 17-year-old center back Ian James as well.
It hasn’t all been smooth – by the underlying numbers, Sporting are the worst team in the league – but there’s been a… lightness, I guess? A freedom, maybe?... Anyway, there’s been a lightness or a freedom to how Sporting have played over the course of this season, and a real joy to it at times. Last week was a great example.
And there’s also been enough wins to keep them mathematically alive, to the point that if they get all three points in this one, they’re just five below the line with five games to go.
Is it going to happen? I don’t think so. But another week of wondering “is it going to happen?” means another week of keeping the vibes high and another week of renewing the overall club culture, and that’s a significant, long-term victory.
This is a fanbase that really wants to see attractive, winning soccer, and it’s been a long journey to get to “attractive, winning soccer,” but honestly… well, I still don’t think they’re there yet. But they’ve made real strides! Head coach Nico Estévez had a lot of work to do piecing a largely new roster together, and it feels like it’s all sort of mostly flowing in the same direction. Finally.
So now it’s about refining their attacking edge while getting the midfield and defensive mix – still some open personnel questions there, especially this weekend – correct. And also, quite obviously, it’s about collecting points.
As it stands, Austin are seventh in the West on 38 points. Win this and they climb a spot to sixth, but more importantly, they push the gap between themselves and 10th-place Houston to eight points, which, frankly, could be insurmountable for the Dynamo.
Again: they can not officially, mathematically clinch a playoff spot with a win. But c’mon. Three points in this one, and they’re in.
Sporting Kansas City
It’s been open, attacking soccer under Zavagnin and they have been committed to that, no matter the game state. You can crack them open for sure, but you have to be precise. Because if you’re not…
Even the best teams on the continent have struggled – at times – against that Sporting attack this year.
They don’t directly press you into turnovers as often as they used to, nor do they get on the ball and keep it like they used to. It’s more of an attacking principle of opportunism, with the idea being that whenever the opposing defense gets slightly unbalanced, you do not give them a chance to rebalance. You exploit that. You attack, downhill at pace.
While that principle doesn’t change, there’s been more flexibility in the formation for the first time in more than 15 years. Lately, it’s been a 4-2-3-1, though just as often it’s a pure 4-4-2.
None of it has really fixed the defensive issues – this team does not play compact through the midfield, and they’re often slow to get pressure to the ball. That means the entire backline has had to do a lot of chasing and win a lot of 1v1s in spots where you don’t want your CBs to have to be winning 1v1s.
These are the things those underlying numbers I mentioned have been screaming about since Matchday 1. Sporting are a fun team, but still not a great one, and most everyone they’ve come up against this year has been able to exploit that.
Austin FC
It’s clear Estévez made fixing the defense his No. 1 priority this season, and that’s understandable given how poor they were against the ball last year. To me, it was a surprise that it was actually a pretty standard 4-4-2 for most of 2025, with Vazquez playing up top alongside Uzuni.
Since the Vazquez injury, though, Estévez has played around more with the formation, as well as the line of confrontation. Last week against San Jose, it was a sort of hybrid 4-3-3/3-4-2-1 with Jon Gallagher shuttling between the midfield and wide on the left, while Wolff was sometimes a free No. 8, sometimes a winger:
They had just 36% possession and played one of their deepest lines of confrontation on the year. That gave them plenty of space to counter into:
Can they do the same this week with Rubio up top? He’s much more of a 9.5 than a pure center forward – since Vazquez got hurt, Rubio has actually spent a lot of time playing as a true No. 10 in a 4-2-3-1 – and there’s no way he’s going to attack space in behind like Vazquez did and Uzuni does.
I half wonder if they’ll look something like San Diego this weekend, with Rubio starting as a No. 9 but then dropping in to form a diamond midfield in possession while the wingers make outside-in attacking runs. That would seem to make the most sense given the personnel on hand. Though without Dani Pereira running the midfield (he’ll be doing that for Venezuela in World Cup qualifiers), that level of control becomes exponentially more difficult to achieve.
It’ll be a 4-2-3-1 again, I think. At least until the hour mark, at which point Mason Toye will come on again and it’ll flip to a 4-4-2.
Also, note that I’ve got Montes in that backline, but it could just as likely be Miller (James, along with CM Zorhan Bassong, is on international duty).
I’m going to call it a 4-3-3 with Rubio playing as a false 9. Also, I’m betting new signing Mateja Djordjevic will make his debut.
I’m also thinking with Pereira out, and both Ilie Sánchez and Besard Sabovic hurt, Wolff will drop into midfield with Jáder Obrian coming in at left wing. Which actually makes a good bit of season since Wolff is a real two-way player who can slip runners through (as above), and Obrian loves attacking into space.
But I don’t know for sure. This team is very, VERY short-handed right now, so Estévez has some decisions to make.
