The San Jose Earthquakes will be strong favorites to continue the best start in franchise history when they visit woeful Sporting Kansas City on Saturday night at Kansas City, Kan.
The Earthquakes (5-1-0, 15 points) never had won five of their first six matches, dating to their first season in the former North American Soccer League in 1974.
But San Jose has been outstanding on both sides of the ball, with star goalkeeper Daniel already having five shutouts and the Earthquakes outscoring their opponents 10-1.
Last weekend, host San Jose drubbed San Diego FC 3-0 in a dominant performance.
Earthquakes coach Bruce Arena acknowledges he’s surprised by the torrid start.
“Well, if you broke training camp and you told me we’d be 5-1 after the first six games … I would not agree with that, so I’m very pleased,” Arena said. “However, we have a long way to go. There’s a lot of room for improvement, and hopefully, we can get through this first half of the season in decent form, so we’re positioned in the second half to be a team that can qualify for the playoffs.”
Niko Tsakiris, 20, scored two goals against San Diego to join former Earthquakes star Landon Donovan as the only players in club history to score two goals in a match before the age of 21. Donovan did it three times.
San Jose began its strong start to the season with a 3-0 home victory over Sporting KC on Feb. 21. Daniel Munie scored twice for the Quakes in that match.
That loss began a dismal start for Sporting Kansas City (1-4-1, 4 points), who have been outscored 14-6.
Last weekend, Sporting KC lost 3-1 to host Real Salt Lake and were outshot 23-5. Salt Lake’s Diego Luna scored in the fourth minute and the rout was on.
“It was like we just weren’t up until they scored,” SKC defender Justin Reynolds said of the early goal. “It is bad. We need to get hit in the face before we start playing, and this is something that we just can’t have. It destroyed our morale. You could see that from the next couple minutes, that we just were kind of scared to play.”
Dejan Joveljic scored the Sporting KC goal. He has four of the team’s six tallies this season and has 22 in 38 matches with the team since being acquired from the Los Angeles Galaxy shortly before the start of the 2025 season.
–Field Level Media
