Sporting Set to Take on San Jose

Sporting Kansas City go on their final long road trip of the MLS regular season when they take on the San Jose Earthquakes at Buck Shaw Stadium tomorrow night. The rest of the way, KC is either in their own time zone or the East Coast for games (they do still have a trip to Honduras in the CCL).

San Jose comes into the game with a fairly impressive home record. They have played 11 games without a loss at home this season. They haven't lost since their season opener against Real Salt Lake. While they've been good at home, it's their road form that's hurt them this season as they currently outside the playoffs looking in right now. They're already replaced last year's coach of the year in Frank Yallop. While they haven't produced the same numbers this year, the offense is still one to be wary of, with Chris Wondolowski, Alan Gordon, and Steven Lenhart.

While San Jose has had their issues lately, Sporting KC has some concerns of their own. Two of their key offensive players look like they could miss this game tomorrow. Kei Kamara, who got hurt near the end of last week's game against New England has been tweeting from home last night and today while the team has been in San Jose, which would rule him out. The other player is midfielder Graham Zusi, who has not played since the all star game. The loss of those two will be hard for KC to over come, especially Kamara, who has picked up a lot of the scoring slack since Claudio Bieler has hit a bit of a slump.

Nielsen

Myers - Collin  -Besler - Sinovice

Joseph - Rosell

Feilhaber

Saad - Bieler - Sapong

Number to Remember - 4750 - That's the number of days since KC last won a game on the road. That's right, 13 years, 2 days since KC last won a game in the Silicon Valley area. In all competitions, KC is 0-10-5 in San Jose since they won 3-0 in August of the 2000 season. Just think for a second how much the league has changed since then. We've contracted two teams, and added nine. We've gone from about four owners owning all the teams to only having two teams that are at least partially owned by one group.

Key Match Up - Aurelien Collin vs Steven Lenhart - Back in 2011 when KC and San Jose faced off, these two went 12 rounds against each other. Collin and Lenhart knocked each other around all game. It was fun to watch. Since then though, we've not gotten to see these two go up against each other.  Tomorrow we should get to see the rematch.

PREDICTION - KC is one of the better teams on the road in the league, while San Jose has the previously mentioned unbeaten run. The smaller field at Buck Shaw will reduce some of KC's work they've been able to do on the road in other stadiums. Without Kamara and Zusi, creative duties will fall to Soony Saad and Benny Feilhaber again. They've done well recently, but they'll need to continue that form if KC want to remain at the top of the East, which continues to be extremely tight. Gonna be hard to end the winless streak at San Jose though.

SKC - 1 (Saad)
SJ - 1 (Wondolowski)