With the sale of Oriol Rosell, Sporting KC have made some moves today to help to fill their midfield a bit ahead of Friday's MLS game against the Houston Dynamo. KC recalled midfielder, Christian Duke from his loan to Oklahoma City today. The move makes sense for KC, of KC's remaining midfielders, Lawrence Olum, Paulo Nagamura, Benny Feilhaber, Alex Martinez, Victor Munoz, and even Toni Dovale, only Olum, Nagamura and Feilhaber can really play the "defensive" midfield role the way Peter Vermes wants. Duke gives KC a bit of cover there, which will be needed if Olum has to slide into central defense on Friday.
The other move I think may be the more interesting of the two. Sporting recalled Mikey Lopez from his loan to Orlando City and turned around and loaned him to the Energy. Lopez so far this season has appeared in nine of the Lions 12 USL Pro games, but he's only gotten 169 minutes of game play. He's gotten just one start, so in his other eight appearances for Orlando he's averaged less than 10 minutes played per appearance. Probably not what Vermes wants from the loan. It's one thing in Jon Kempin's instance last year where he was mainly a backup to Miguel Gallardo for Orlando, there's only one keeper on the field, and Kempin still got a number of games over the course of the season. In OKC, Lopez is likely to get more time on the field, which is really what he needs at this point of his career. It will be interesting to see how much he contributes this weekend in OKC's two games in Wilmington and Charlotte.
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