Sitting here watching Sporting Kansas City lose yet again tonight, a long, perfect line in their quest for a winless season. This comes after a weekend in which I watched my daughter's JV soccer team get outscored a combined 12-0 in three tournament games in 24 hours (miraculously we won one of those three in a shootout against a team slightly worse than us). And I am a longtime fan of the 2015 World Champion Kansas City Royaals, who as of this writing are 4-15 and may break records for incompetence this season. Yes, this is maybe the universe balancing out the fact that the Chiefs have won the Super Bowl twice in four years and I we get to watch Patrick Mahomes do amazing things every fall Sunday. But right now the most of the teams that I can say that I genuinely support (Shrewsbury Town FC doesn't count as I've still never seen them live, thanks COVID breaking out in March 2020) are hot garbage.
Yes, sports doesn't mean as much as it used to. My favorite team for the past decade has been whatever teams my kids happen to be playing for. And with anything besides my loved ones, I know that I'm rooting for laundry. But still, sports helps shape our lives. And so why does it have teo be so bad? Why do I hate watch them with a special sports anger towards Khiry Shelton?
So since it would be unkind to dissecte my daughter's soccer team, and the Royals I still have not watched in person, let's look at Sporting KC. Why do 'we' suck?
1. MLS is different than it was a decade ago. It has almost twice as many teams, and investment in many teams, old and new, far outstrips what SKC is doing. We still act like being a mid-major club is good enough. That we still have this mindset now makes it seem like we can't compete.
2. We have done a poor job in turning over the squad. Even as we haven't developed and then kept decent youngsters (e.g. G Busio, potentially great here but floundering in the Italian second division), we hold onto guys who have stayed around too long like Graham Zusi and Roger Espinoza, and we allow Khiry Shelton to think he's a major component of this team.
3. The guys we do bring in like Erick Thommy and Remi Walter are solid players (I mean, they are at least better than Khiry Shelton), but nobody that will really push the team towards greatness. We need solid players, but when do ever sign somebody that really changes things?
4. Khiry Shelton is still on this team.
5. Too many injuries for a small squad mean that when Alan Pulido gets hurt, Khiry Shelton plays a lot.
6. We don't have the players for Vermes' 4-3-3, but we still continue to play it, just as we did a decade ago. Formation is not the biggest problem with this team...but somewhere there needs to be a recognition that just because it worked in olden days, that doesn't mean it will work now.
7. Finally, as I watch SKC try to chase this game tonight, we just brought Khiry Shelton on as a substitute. Somehow I don't see this wroking out well.
(10 minutes later, watching the end of the game)
Yep, we lost again. Dang.
