The Playoffs, Sporting Kansas City Style

It's that time of year again and the Sporting Kansas City faithful are getting geared up for what should be an exciting playoff race. Albeit the spot still isn't locked down, Sporting Kc have a very good chance at being with the MLS elite when the playoffs kick off in late October and early November.


The next game Sporting Kc has to clinch a playoff spot might just be the biggest of the season, as Sporting welcome the New York Red Bulls to LSP. And when the final "regular-season" game comes around on October 22 Sporting Kc will have to face DC United, a team that as of right now are 5 points out of a playoff spot. However, if we were to win against the NYRB's next Saturday we would clinch a playoff spot. In-fact if the season were to end today we would be in the playoffs no questions asked.

Basically, no matter what happens there is a 98.2% we will make the playoffs. But we don't want to just finish in a wild-card spot and hope we win the following game to actually get into the playoffs. No, we want to finish top of the East and have as many playoff games as we can here at LSP, plus the higher we finish the better chance there is of us getting a lower-quality team to face. If we choose to let fate handle our playoff destiny then we could end up facing a team of a higher caliber. I mean, which hypothetical scenario would you want to have: Away playing against a star studded LA Galaxy? Or home against an expansion side Portland Timbers? I would choose the latter one. On the other hand, just making it into the playoffs would deem this season a success, and would save Peter Vermes' job. After we seemingly shot ourselves in the foot with a horrendous 10 game road trip that saw us sink to last place in the entire league. But, due to some great home form and some stand-out performances from the youngsters (Sapong, Besler, Zusi, etc.) we now find ourselves in a situation that other clubs would die for.