Sporting Kansas City will try to keep their slim playoff hopes alive when they host Western Conference-leading San Diego FC on Saturday night.
Kansas City (6-12-6, 24 points) is six points behind the ninth and final playoff position in the West with 10 matches remaining. The club’s last match was a 3-0 loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps on July 26, its third consecutive winless result (0-2-1).
SKC’s 45 goals allowed are the 4th-highest total in MLS. They hope that center back Alan Montes, brought in on loan from Club Necaxa in Liga MX, can help in that regard.
“I’m a player who maintains a lot of order in the defensive zone,” Montes said, according to the Kansas City Star. “That’s what I’m looking for in this team, to establish order above all else, and for the team to become solid in defense.”
Despite a 2-0 win over Mazatlan on Tuesday, San Diego (14-7-4, 46 points) failed to advance past the group stage of Leagues Cup thanks to earlier losses to Liga MX sides Pachuca and Tigres UANL.
That’s been one of the few missteps for the first-year outfit, which holds a one-point lead over the Whitecaps for first place in the West — though Vancouver has a match in hand. San Diego’s last MLS match, a 1-0 win over Nashville SC on July 25, saw Andres Dreyer extend his league-leading assist total to 16.
“Our feeling is that we’re going to face kind of like a mid-low block team that’s going to look to counterattack us, catch us on set pieces,” San Diego head coach Mikey Varas said of Kansas City. “But we’ll be ready for whatever because we’ve had other teams that have that kind of ethos and then try to surprise us with men marking and on goal kicks or something like that.”
While Varas has had tremendous success so far, he was quick to credit others when asked on Thursday what he’s learned in his first season coaching in MLS.
“It’s a credit to everybody who’s involved, everyone from ownership to leadership to people selling tickets in the front office to our football leadership to our staff to our players,” Varas said. “Great things are done with other people and for other people, and I just feel really blessed to be a part of this.”
–Field Level Media
