2020 Season Preview: Sporting Kansas City
/Point-above-replacement values are explained here. Non-penalty expected goals + expected assists are explained here, and you can see all players’ xG+xA in our interactive expected goals tables. Touch percent is the percentage of total team touches by that player while he is on the field, which can be found in our interactive expected passing tables.
By Kevin Minkus (@kevinminkus)
A common refrain of Sporting Kansas City season previews from offseasons past is “get a center forward.” Here are some quotes from past ASA and MLSsoccer.com previews to that effect:
“Up top, SKC again has depth, but are still lacking a proven MLS goal-scorer.”
“There are a few questions, though, with Kristzian Nemeth stepping into the club's starting center forward role.”
“However, the talk will almost always turn back to that No. 9 position. It's not that Sporting have been completely deficient there over the years, it's just that they've never really found a solution that stuck.”
“What Vermes hasn’t done (yet) is land the forward #SKCnation yearns for.”
In Alan Pulido, SKC have finally filled that void. I made the case in my Offseason Outlook article that, despite some data-driven pushback, this was in fact a void that needed filling, though I also mentioned in that that Pulido might not be the right center forward to fill it.
I don’t think, however, that heading into 2020 this is where SKC has the largest leverage to improve. Instead, it’s their defense. Sporting Kansas City’s defense was not great last year. They conceded 67 goals, the second most in the league. 538’s SPI power ranking has them as MLS’s sixth worst defense. They did concede those 67 goals on just 47 expected goals, which could be read as horribly unlucky. But they were awful at preventing counterattacks, and generally poor defending in transition, which is to some extent a blindspot for our xG model.
We can see what the general shape of those counterattacks looks like:
This fantastic graphic created by @JmooreQuakes shows a direct line between where the ball was turned over (the offense gained possession) and the end point (where a shot was taken from) on counter attacks.
SKC were especially susceptible to transition attacks running right down the middle of the field. They repeatedly got killed on those plays. Some of this is on missing Ike Opara (Minnesota’s above map looks a little bit better), who is adept at stepping into the midfield to make plays on the ball. I think a bigger part of it is on the team’s midfield requiring the center backs to make plays on the ball in the first place. I’ll defer to the amazing Andy Edwards on this:
Ilie Sanchez does many things well, but covering ground defensively is not his strong suit:
It’s not totally a personnel issue either, though. To some extent, the coach has to play a system that makes the best use of the team’s players. SKC were decently pressy in 2019. Their defensive actions at home came the fourth farthest upfield of any team in the league. They were ninth in passes allowed per defensive action. And they allowed opposing teams the eighth worst passing percentage in their own third.
That’s an okay way to play with a midfield and a defense that eat up space. SKC, especially after Roger Espinoza went out injured, didn’t have that. Instead, teams found it easy to play over or through them. Sporting invited the 5th most long balls in the league - over the top of their press - and allowed teams to complete them at the league’s 8th highest rate. They were 13th in the league in passing percentage allowed in the middle third.
Peter Vermes has always valued flexibility, both in his budget and his roster. Because of that planning, this is a fixable problem with the personnel he has right now. If he is committed to Ilie as the defensive mid - Ilie a good deep passer, and it allows Felipe Gutierrez to get on the ball closer to goal - then don’t press! If, on the other hand, he wants to continue playing aggressively, then drop Gutierrez to the number six and ask him to do more work defensively. He’s certainly capable of it:
As with most of SKC’s question marks heading into 2020, the ideal long-term fix here is for their youth setup to produce the solution. Wan Kuzain is supposed to that guy, but, his growth stagnated a bit last year.
What Kansas City chooses to do with the central midfield, according to how they want to play, will be their most interesting tactical question for the year. I’ll also be interested in watching who emerges as the starters from their very deep group of wingers. Right now, my guess is the depth chart looks something like this, with lots of flexibility in the middle and across the top line.
The team is pretty deep across the board, with some good prospects at multiple positions. Let’s go line by line:
Keepers
Sporting Kansas City will be fine in the net. Tim Melia actually posted his worst shot-stopping season in 2019, in terms of G - xG, since his Chivas USA days, but he’s still just 33 years old, and probably not on the wrong side of the aging curve. His backup, Richard Sanchez, is a roughly league average shot-stopper and distributor. 18-year old John Pulskamp may be the team’s goalie of the future.
Defense
Matt Besler and Graham Zusi are SKC legends, and will be back, probably starting, in defense for 2020. They’re also both 33. At some point, it will be time to move away from them as cornerstones of the defensive line, but that point might not be this season. It might be beneficial, though, to tweak their roles somewhat. Zusi pretty frequently last year got caught too far upfield when the ball turned over - he doesn’t quite have the legs to track back like he once did. Instead, it maybe makes sense to instead ask left back Luis Martins to push up into the attack, while Zusi stays home. Martins has looked solid in preseason.
Newcomer Robert Puncec will be pretty important to the team’s defensive improvement. One of Andreu Fontas or Botond Barath was supposed to be Opara’s replacement. They were really not that. SKC will have to hope that Puncec was a better acquisition. If he’s not, the team added Winston Reid on loan from West Ham - he seems like a good guy to take a flyer on.
Jaylin Lindsay, backing up Zusi, is the young guy to watch of the group.
Midfield:
I’ve talked a bit already about the choices Vermes has in the midfield. Some of his decision-making will be predicated on how good new addition Gadi Kinda is. If Kinda can effectively play and create as the eight or the 10, putting Gutierrez closer to the forward line may be less necessary. Vermes’ job is easier, too, if Gianluca Busio takes a big step forward this year. Busio’s attacking contributions have been pretty good - he was on 0.37 xG + xA per 96 last season in about 1000 minutes, but he doesn’t offer much else for them yet.
Forwards:
SKC has a lot of options across the forward line, as well. Pulido will start as the number nine, with Erik Hurtado backing him up. Hurtado is fine as a backup, but not much more. Johnny Russell has typically played on the right wing, which allows him to cut inside to get the ball on his left foot. Through preseason, though, he’s been playing on the left and staying wider. Maybe because Russell is a bit too eager to shoot from distance, and so that he can send in better balls from there for Pulido to get on the end of.
Khiry Shelton will probably start on the right. Shelton comes to SKC with a bit of shine after spending time in the Bundesliga, but his team was really bad there. I’ll leave my colleague Harrison Crow’s words here from when Shelton left MLS originally:
“His expected passing numbers weren't great (-1.9) and led forwards (minimum 1000 minutes) with the highest touch to turnover rate in MLS. His expected buildup per 96 minutes among his peers wasn’t great either, ranking 28th out of 45. That’s not to say he didn’t have great moments, but his numbers shouldn’t be impossible to replicate.”
Daniel Salloi and Gerso are both very good backups. They’d be solid starters on most teams. Salloi can’t miss as many shots as he did last season. He had just one goal from 7.0 xG.
2020 Expectations
FiveThirtyEight has Sporting Kansas City at 51% to make the playoffs. That might be a little bit pessimistic. I wouldn’t bet that a Peter Vermes coached team misses the playoffs two years in a row. But they do feel like a team in the fifth to eighth range of the Western Conference. If Pulido is an elite MLS forward, Puncec and Kinda pan out, and Vermes lands on the right system, SKC could be much better than that. If some of their prospects - Lindsey and Busio especially - take steps forward, KC’s ceiling is raised, too. At some point, probably not this season, SKC will have to rely on those kids. Their core of Melia, Zusi, Besler, Sanchez, and Espinoza is aging, and it’ll be time to hand over the keys to the car. For 2020, though, those familiar names will be back, looking to take Sporting Kansas City to a place in the postseason, where they typically belong.