Seven down, Three to Go

Being a fan of Sporting KC I tend to vent my thoughts on the club here. My biggest argument over the past two months is the removal of manager Peter Vermes. This week I am happy to see some other bloggers warming up slightly to what I've been on about. Though, it is still lukewarm comparatively speaking. There was a half quote this week attributed to Vermes from 2009. He was (semi) quoted as saying he would need (at least) two years to build ''his'' team. I found this a little hard to believe. First, Vermes has been with the club since '06 as the technical director. His job was to help find players for then manager Curt Onalfo. Therefore, he has had say in the players who have come into the club. Secondly, during his time at the club many of the players that have come in have all failed to make the grade in MLS or were trade/released only to do better with another club/environment. Players like Santiago Hirsig, Ivan Trujillo and Carlos Marinelli were players that were brought in with high expectations and never fulfilled them. Meanwhile, the team traded quality players such as Luis Gil, Yura Movsisyan and Herculez Gomez. Yes, Movsisyan and Gomez under performed for the club, but perhaps we should be looking at the manager and technical director for these failings as both players have gone on to some success. Vermes has also had mixed results in the draft as well.

The unfortunate aspect is that Sporting will give Vermes at least until the end of the season or until the play-offs are out of reach. It's plain to see, however, that many of these players are just not playing for him right now. Compared to other sports, in soccer when players want a coach out they don't play as hard as they normally would. I think it's hard for American sports fans to get their heads around it, but it does happen.

Being a fan I was never a supporter of Vermes getting the job permanently and since then nothing has changed my mind. I have the same feeling of Vermes as I do Alexi Lalas: They were good players for the US and MLS at a time when US soccer was struggling on the world stage and barely had a professional league. Perhaps today they wouldn't even get a look from the national team and possibly might be over looked by MLS. They did well in a time when the game wasn't much in the US. In Lalas' case he tried his hand at being a GM for New York and the LA. Both with poor results, other than the David Beckham to LA move, and to be fair he had nothing to do with getting D-Beck to LA. Now it seems Vermes is out of his depth similar to Lalas. On a side note Lalas shows his lack of soccer understand with his piss poor commentary that dumbs down the soccer fans of America.

Like I've said prior I want this team to do well and hell they may turn it around.