KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City may have a new name and a new look, but the team’s fans will have to wait almost seven months to catch their team at home.
Amidst the hoopla surrounding the club’s transition from Wizards to Sporting Kansas City on Wednesday, president Robb Heineman also revealed the schedule the team will play as it waits to move into its new stadium, scheduled to be completed in June.
“The team will play on the road at the beginning of the season,” Heineman told MLSsoccer.com. “No alternate road game locations, no Arrowhead. We’re going to play eight to 10 games on the road and then come home.”
In this case, that means the 18,500-seat stadium currently being constructed in the shadow of the team’s former digs at CommunityAmerica Ballpark in Kansas City, Kan.
Heineman said the new stadium, which has yet to be named, would open on Thursday, June 9, with a nationally televised game on the ESPN family of networks.
Unlike the Philadelphia Union, which played a couple early games at Lincoln Financial Field last season before moving into PPL Park, Sporting KC will have the disadvantage of playing all of their games on the road for nearly three months before ending with a home-heavy home stretch.
“It is what it is,” manager Peter Vermes said. “I know the upside is that on June 9, we move into our new stadium. That’s a huge upgrade. We’ll have to really work hard in the preseason to be battle tested for the road very early on.”
Kansas City were 4-8-3 away from CAB in 2010, but the team’s road form improved as the season went on and the team grew more comfortable in Vermes’ preferred high-pressure system.
From July on the club went to Columbus, Chicago and Los Angeles twice (Galaxy and Chivas USA) and walked away with three points while also drawing Colorado and Philadelphia away from home.
“I thought we ended the second half of the season very well on the road,” Vermes said. “I think we proved to ourselves that we can play anywhere. It really started to suit our game.”
Next year, however, Sporting won’t have the luxury of easing into the season with a mixture of fixtures. With between eight and 10 road games arriving immediately, the club will have to keep its head above water long enough to take advantage of the flood of home games back loaded into its schedule.
“We’ve got to be bullet-proof,” Heineman said. “We’ve got to have a bunch of men and leaders, and we’ve got to be solid in the back. There are some of those things that we were not last season."
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