After snapping a club-record 13-match winless run last weekend in their first match following the departure of longtime manager Peter Vermes, Sporting Kansas City look to make it back-to-back victories when they host the Portland Timbers on Sunday.
Dejan Joveljic scored his team-leading third and fourth goals after halftime of SKC’s 2-0 victory last Saturday over visiting St. Louis City. Sporting Kansas City improved to 1-5-1 with 4 points.
Vermes’ exit brought an end to a 16-year tenure that was the longest in MLS history.
Now interim manager Kerry Zavagnin faces the challenge of trying to replicate a similarly intense performance against Portland now that some of the emotions triggered by Vermes’ departure have subsided.
“The leadup to last week’s game, we talked about not being able to do anything about the past, and the past doesn’t really matter,” Zavagnin said. “And so we kind of go into this week with the same idea that despite the fact that it was a positive result now, there’s nothing we can do about that anymore, and so we’re on to the next.”
Portland (3-2-2, 11 points) enters Sunday’s clash in better form than SKC’s last opponent — unbeaten in its last four following a 0-0 draw last Saturday at Austin.
The Timbers have conceded only twice over those four matches. And before last week’s draw, Brazilian attacker Antony scored his second, third and fourth goals across two comfortable wins, 3-1 home to Houston and 3-0 victory at Colorado.
Portland manager Phil Neville also expects Uruguayan attacker Jonathan Rodriguez — who, like Antony, is primarily a left-sided player — to be available for the first time this season following a knee injury. Rodriguez scored 16 goals in 27 MLS appearances for Portland in 2024.
“He’s trained one session with the team. He’ll train again tomorrow,” Neville said Thursday of Rodriguez. “So to ask him to start a game is I think really unfair, but without a doubt we want to get him on the pitch. You just hope that Antony now rises to that challenge, and that’s the key. You’ve got to rise to the challenge.”
–Field Level Media
