Pulido Addresses Chivas Rumor, Sporting KC Kit Numbers Revealed?
Also, the 2025 Gold Cup could be very unique in terms of the teams participating, and Kansas City could be a host!
It’s been a while and there is quite a bit of information floating around about Kansas City football that we wanted to draw attention to. Let’s get straight to that.
Pulido addresses transfer ‘rumour’
In an interview with 90min.com, Alan Pulido spoke about a range of topics, but when you see the word transfer next to Sporting Kansas City’s most expensive transfer of all time, your ears will prick up your ears. Presumably he was responding to a report that he wanted to return to Liga MX and Chivas Guadalajara in particular.
“That possibility is never ruled out,” Pulido said. “Obviously I enjoy this league a lot [MLS]. All of the infrastructure that the league manages and the quality of life they show you here in the United States is different, but I’m not closed to any opportunity. Of course, I also take into account that my career started in Mexico, so it wouldn’t be bad to go back there at a time for my retirement.”
It doesn’t sound like he’s going anywhere, but he’s out of contract after the 2023 season.
“Right now I’m enjoying being with Sporting Kansas City, I want to be champions in that league too, it’s my ultimate dream and the goal I set when I got so hopeful with Sporting KC,” Pulido added added.
I hope he’s amazing in 2023 and gives KC a discount and stays beyond, but that means he even beats Willy Agada for the starting spot.
Sporting KC shirt numbers revealed?
In preseason, I often draw my attention to silly things like what number the players will be wearing. Johnny Russell had a humorous take on Cristiano Ronaldo possibly taking his number. It didn’t matter, but I noticed in preseason that Marinos Tzionis wore number 77 and Tim Leibold wore number 33.
Then when I was playing around with the new Sporting KC app (because of these new Sporting Blue Rewards – check them out) I noticed that several players had numbers listed that we didn’t know before.
I don’t think this is definitive at all, but they have numbers for:
- #6 – Nemanja Radoja
- #14 – Tim Leibold
- #31 – Danny Flores
Those could be placeholders, but Radoja makes sense as a defensive midfielder to wear the number 6. The other numbers are less meaningful, but Leibold has previously worn 14. Flores wore 26 to Virginia Tech, but that’s Erik Thommy’s number, so I’m sure that wasn’t a starter. Nobody else seems to have listed a different number (but you can’t rule out future changes).
Speaking of jerseys, this isn’t a leak, but Footy Headlines has a model of a theoretical jersey based on the well-known navy blue collar and button. I don’t like it, but it makes sense that if Argyle was used it would have to be more subtle to account for sponsors on the kit. That’s too subtle for me. That would definitely only look like Sporting Blue from afar.
2025 Gold Cup to Kansas City?
According to Record, the Gold Cup 2025 could be very interesting. It will be the last major competition before the 2026 World Cup, which will be held in the United States, Mexico and Canada. Because of this, these three countries are reportedly trying to work towards inviting eight countries from around the world to the competition, which is usually limited to CONCACAF nations. That means two from UEFA (Europe), two from AFC (Asia and Australia), two from CAF (Africa) and two from CONMEBOL (South America).
Part of that rumor is that the 16 host cities, including Kansas City, would host the games. It would be great World Cup preparation for any future hosts, even if the scale was much smaller. Also more soccer for us in KC!
More MLS playoff extension
We talked about it recently at For the Glory KC, but it’s worth putting into words The Blue Testament. The Athletic reports that MLS is considering taking on an absurd 18 (!) teams in the 2023 MLS Cup Playoffs. There were 14 teams in 2022 (seven per conference) and if you went up to 18 (nine per conference) over 62 percent of the teams would make the playoffs, with St. Louis City SC bringing the total to 29 teams in the league would increase.
There isn’t much to say about that. It’s stupid. It waters down the playoffs and uses teams that don’t deserve to be there. It also makes the regular season less important because you can be bad and still make the playoffs. If that had been the format last year (and the Western Conference hadn’t gotten bigger because Nashville is going east), Sporting would have missed KC by just three points despite being miserable for two-thirds of the season.
Although SKC were terrible, they were not eliminated until 32 games out of 34 last year. I suppose it’s more exciting to be there all the time, but it just creates an almost meaningless regular season.
As always, all of this seems to be done in the name of giving Apple more games in the playoffs and keeping teams alive to sell regular season tickets. But if it’s for Apple, then why pay for the MLS Season Pass during the regular season unless you’re a madman like me who needs to watch every game? Games don’t matter, so pay later in the season and save your money.
The season starts in less than two weeks and it’s crazy that that hasn’t been found out yet.
Kortne Ford Out for the season
David already covered this in his fantastic article on the options to replace Ford, but this site is an archive of all things SKC so it needed a mention of its own.
Unfortunately, Kortne Ford tore his Achilles tendon against Real Salt Lake last season. He underwent surgery on Friday and will miss the entire 2023 season. This leaves the team with just three central defenders (Andreu Fontas, Robert Voloder and newly signed Chris Rindov).
The team will certainly put Ford on the season-ending injury list to wipe his roster spot, although they may withhold whoever replaces him as a season-ending injury substitute as teams only get one and he doesn’t meet the salary cap for this mechanism ($250,000 under 2022 rules) which they could spend on a replacement. They have until the end of the primary transfer window (April 24) to make that move and could hold out should someone more expensive get injured.
Quick notes
- The Athletic landed an interview with KC Current signing Hanna Glas.
- Kansas City Current’s first-round draft picks Michelle Cooper and Alexa Spaanstra will represent their country for the USA U-23 national team in Paris from February 12-21. They play France on February 17th and 20th.
- KC Star’s Sam McDowell reports that Pulido is not yet in full training but will be this week.
- Willy Agada, Daniel Salloi and Johnny Russell had fun scoring all four goals against Minnesota United last season.
- I haven’t had a chance to listen yet, but Kevin Lopez sits down and interviews former ones TBT Employee Aly Trost Martin talks about her plans for 2023.
- This is a bit of a mess for Canada.
- VAR advances to semifinals and finals of US Open Cup. I understand for the smaller teams why it can’t be in the whole tournament, but I’m all for doing things right, which I think VAR mostly does in MLS.
- LA Galaxy vs LAFC Season Opener at the Rose Bowl is 75 percent sold out. This is great for Major League Soccer.
- Sporting KC’s “rivals” Minnesota United will be without Emanuel Reynoso. Bebelo was suspended without pay, I assume there are some pretty serious allegations against him.
- I mentioned that at For the Glory KC last week (you’re listening to my podcast right?!?!) but Leo Messi may yet come to Inter Miami CF.
- Charlotte FC’s new kit has apparently been leaked. Purple? I don’t know what meaning this color has for her, maybe it’s deeper than I know.
Map of US professional teams by county from MLS
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