KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Since he joined Sporting Kansas City early in the regular season, Soni Mustivar has been playing catch-up. Before too long – perhaps as early as this weekend – he could be playing in the XI.
The Haitian international has made six appearances off the bench in the defensive midfield, for a total of 61 minutes of match time, as he acclimates to his new club and league. But with Servando Carrasco suspended for Sunday's home match against the Chicago Fire (5 pm ET; ESPN2) for violent conduct during last week's 4-4 away draw against the Dynamo, manager Peter Vermes could give Mustivar the start for the first time.
“I don't know if the coach will put me there, but I'm ready for every game, to play all the game,” Mustivar told MLSsoccer.com on Friday. “So if the coach wants to put me in, I'm ready for it.”
Since his arrival from Romanian club Petrolul Ploesti, Mustivar has had to acclimate himself not only to his new club and their fitness demands, but also to MLS's style of play.
“It's definitely high-intensity,” he said. “Every team runs a lot. Every time, they put pressure on you and don't let you play easy. It's a big difference from Europe.”
It's a big difference from a lot of other places, Vermes told reporters earlier Friday during the club's weekly news conference.
“For him, it was really understanding – because he wasn't with us in preseason – so for him, it was really seeing what a game is like, what all of that is like on a daily basis,” Vermes said. “You've heard me say this: I think there are a lot of MLS games that are one car crash after another out there, and you've got to be durable and deal with that. And your vision has to be very good to be able to avoid some of those car crashes.
“He's starting to understand that the pace of the game is very fast, the game's very physical, and I think he's starting to get more and more adjusted to that.”
In fact, Mustivar said, he doesn't feel as though he's only been with Sporting since early March.
“It was different for me because I came late and I didn't do the preseason, but everything's been great,” he said. “They put me in the team quickly, and I feel I've been here one year already. It's a good thing.”
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And as he adjusts, Vermes said, Mustivar is showing more and more of what he can add to Sporting's mix – as he did against the Dynamo, when he came on as a late sub and helped Sporting fight back to secure the road point.
“Probably a little more quickness, athleticism,” Vermes said of Mustivar's impact in that match. “Strong dude. He's a strong guy. The other thing is that I think he was really confident when he came in. He was very confident on the ball. He was strong.”
Mustivar also has solid leadership skills, Vermes said, as evidenced by his captaincy at Petrolul when he was just 24.
“He played in a very tough league, where he came from, and he was the captain of his team there, after six months of playing there,” Vermes said. “That's very unusual for a foreign player like that to all of a sudden become captain of a team, and I think a lot of that was because of his work ethic within the team.”
Steve Brisendine covers Sporting Kansas City for MLSsoccer.com.
