KANSAS CITY, Mo. – If Sporting Kansas City win their regular-season finale, their prize will be a postseason matchup against a team they haven't beaten all year.
A victory at home on Sunday against New York (8:30 pm ET; ESPN2 in US, TSN2 in Canada) would lock up third place in the Eastern Conference for Sporting, setting up a home-and-away series against the New England Revolution in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Kansas City went 0-for-3 against the Revs in the regular season – but the way manager Peter Vermes sees it, if Sporting are going to make a late run at defending their MLS Cup title, they'll have to go through the Revs at some point.
“I'm a big believer that when you get into the championship games, when you get into playoffs and you're playing games like this, if you're good and you're going to win, you have to beat everybody,” Vermes told reporters after Saturday's training session. “The only other thing that has to go your way is that you have to be pretty – I don't want to say lucky – you've got to be fortunate to not have a ton of injuries, and that's one area that we aren't in a good place on.
“But I'm hoping that what will happen is, with a little time, some of these guys will get better.”
The latest casualties in Sporting's injury-plagued season are midfielder Benny Feilhaber (right ankle sprain) and right back Igor Juliao (left hamstring strain) both hurt in Thursday night's 2-0 away loss to Deportivo Saprissa that knocked Kansas City out of the CONCACAF Champions League.
Juliao was already suspended for Friday's match on card accumulation, with Jacob Peterson likely to replace him at fullback as he did after the injury on Thursday. Feilhaber, meanwhile, joins center back Matt Besler (thigh contusion) and goalkeeper Andy Gruenebaum (calf strain) on the list of players likely to miss Sunday's match.
“I would say Benny's probably out,” Vermes said, then paused and added: “I would say all of them are out.”
The Red Bulls are also dealing with injuries in their backline, and Sunday's match does feature the league's top two scorers: New York's Bradley Wright-Phillips, who leads the Golden Boot race with 25 goals, and Sporting's Dom Dwyer, who has scored a club-record 22 MLS goals this year.
Dwyer didn't want to talk about the matchup on Saturday – “I just want to play the game,” he told MLSsoccer.com – and midfielder Paulo Nagamura told reporters the situation didn't necessarily portend a wide-open, high-scoring game.
“It's definitely going to be a game where the two top goalscorers in the league are going to try to score and put their name on the Golden Boot,” Nagamura said, “and I'm sure both of them want to win the game. But I don't know if it's going to be an open game. For our part, we're definitely looking for the win.”
Steve Brisendine covers Sporting Kansas City for MLSsoccer.com.
