From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match5 Sep 2026
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 4‑1 against St. Louis CITY SC, and it could have been more.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.43, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Ninety minutes of Calvin Harris at his very best
Marked 8.92. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Sporting Kansas City.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Jaime Gómez falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.25, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Squad7 Sep 2026
The manager makes an example of Or Blorian
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad7 Sep 2026
He wheeled away like a man who had been carrying it for months, because he had. Sporting Kansas City have their signing off the mark and one press-conference question retired.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Capita runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 8. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match26 Aug 2026
Inter Miami CF ended it 0‑2. The season narrows to the league now, and everyone in the ground knew it before the final whistle.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Jaime Gómez was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad31 Aug 2026
The manager makes an example of Emir Karić
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Capita falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 16. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad31 Aug 2026
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match19 Aug 2026
A 3‑2 win over Vancouver Whitecaps, and the draw for the next round can be watched with some interest for once.
Match19 Aug 2026
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. Sporting Kansas City scored in the 121th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Two goals and a mark of 8.20 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 26 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Market24 Aug 2026
CF Montreal come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Sporting Kansas City did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
24 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Squad24 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sporting Kansas City this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boardroom24 Aug 2026
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market17 Aug 2026
The bid was some way short and Sporting Kansas City did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Match12 Aug 2026
The 87th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Taylor Calheira decided nobody was going anywhere. Austin FC had no time left to answer.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Jacob Bartlett, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 7.79
A mark of 7.79 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Emir Karić in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sporting Kansas City this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match15 Aug 2026
Portland Timbers left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
The terraces17 Aug 2026
At 20 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Squad17 Aug 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Shapi Suleymanov, and the manager let it.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at Sporting Kansas City training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jaime Gómez is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market10 Aug 2026
LA Galaxy come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Sporting Kansas City did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
A brace, and Dejan Joveljić takes the afternoon — 8.62
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Dejan Joveljić provided it, and the 8.62 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Squad10 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sporting Kansas City this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Capita falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Marked 8.25 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Market10 Aug 2026
48 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad3 Aug 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Manu García and Sporting Kansas City agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Shapi Suleymanov was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Match1 Aug 2026
Houston Dynamo left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 17. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market3 Aug 2026
49 months and counting on Emir Karić
Still no offer on the table, and Emir Karić’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
The cruellest goal, and it is Taylor Calheira's
A touch he did not want, a bounce he could not have read, and his name in the wrong column. There is no consoling a man after one of these, and Sporting Kansas City will not try tonight.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Lasse Berg Johnsen trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Market3 Aug 2026
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.