More Call Ups for KC, and its Affect

Sporting Kansas City today announced three more players had been called up to represent their national team today.  Mikey Lopez, Kansas City's first round draft pick this year has been called up to the US U20 team for the upcoming Toulon Tournament in France.  The tournament in France goes from May 28th through June 8th and is a warm up for the U20 World Cup this summer in Turkey.  For the Toulon tournament, the USA is grouped with Colombia, Congo, South Korea, and France.  The US will France on the 28th, Colombia on the 30th, Congo on the 1st, before closing out group play on the 5th vs South Korea. If the US finishes in the top two in their group they'll advance to play in either the finals or the third place match on the 8th. With travel, Lopez is likely to miss the league games vs Houston and Montreal as well as KC's first US Open Cup match on the 28th.  The last is probably the most disappointing as Lopez likely would have made his debut if he'd stayed with the team.

The other two call ups are KC's Haitian contingent, Mechack Jerome and Peterson Joseph.  Both are back with the national team for two games against the previous two World Cup champions.  Haiti will play Spain at Sun Life Stadium down in Miami on June 8th.  Haiti will then travel to Brazil where they will take on the 2006 World Cup champions Italy on the 12th in the Maracana in Rio de Janeiro as Italy prepares for the Confederations Cup.  The pair would not miss any league games, but the two would miss a potential 4th round US Open Cup match on the 12th should Sporting win their first game.

The win puts Kansas City in an interesting position team wise.  That gives KC a total of 7 players currently on the roster that will be traveling with their national team over the next month or so, with Matt Besler, Kei Kamara, Soony Saad, and Graham Zusi being the other four. If those 7 were all to be gone at the same time, KC would only have 17 available players in Kansas City when you don't count the 4 players on loan in Orlando and Teal Bunbury recovering from his ACL tear still.

There is some good news in this though.  First, there is no time during this stretch that Kansas City that all seven of those players will be gone. For Houston only Saad and Lopez are likely to be unavailable.  For the US Open Cup game on Tuesday the 28th those two plus Besler and Zusi will not be available.  The June 1st game against Montreal will see three, Lopez, Besler, and Zusi.  Should KC win their third round US Open Cup match, they'll be missing five for the fourth round match on the 12th as Besler and Zusi will be joined by Mechack Jerome, Peterson Joseph, and Kei Kamara for that match. The other good news is that KC's schedule during this run is fairly light.  KC only has two league games and potentially two Open Cup games affected by these call ups.  It could certainly have been a lot worse for Kansas City. 

To see the break down of about when players will be gone check out the below graph I crudely drew up. (Click to see full size.)