Heineman and Vermes Q&A

Yesterday as a follow up to the announcement of Roger Espinoza's signing, Espinoza, Peter Vermes, and Robb Heineman did a Q&A at Sprint hosted by Nate Bukaty. While there was a lot of good information given out during it, there's one area that I want to focus in on specifically. Heineman and Vermes were asked about accommodating players wants to go abroad and whether that would continue. Both Heineman and Vermes talked about the team's desire to work with the players and their aspirations to want to go abroad. They explained how it's a two way street and how getting Espinoza back was because of their willingness to allow players to go abroad. At the end of the question Vermes mentioned how word has started to get around about Sporting and now more players are contacting them saying that they've spoken with Uri and they really want to come to KC. Specifically he said "We're dealing with a player right now that has been in our stadium, and played a game in our stadium, who's a foreign player, and wants to come to us because he has been in our environment and seen what it's like and he wants to come here. And if we're open that way we're going to attract more players than we lose."

While the whole answer here is a good look into the mindset of how Sporting does business with their players and gets new players to come in, the question that this quote brings up, is who is the player Sporting is dealing with. 

Unfortunately I don't have the answer to this, but you can take some guesses on the team if you look at the international teams that have played here. There have been a number of friendlies and competitive games with international opponents at Sporting Park. When it comes to national teams you have Guadeloupe, Gautemala, and Jamaica who have all played the US at Sporting Park. Other teams are Panama and Canada who were part of the 2011 Gold Cup. Then you have the U23 teams of El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, and Canada who all played at Sporting Park as part of the 2012 Olympic qualifying for CONCACAF. So it's possible the player Vermes mentioned is from one of those teams.

The other possibility is that the player is one from an opponent that Sporting has played in an international match. Both competitive and friendlies, Sporting has played a number of international teams in games at Sporting Park. In friendlies, Sporting has played the likes of Newcastle, Chivas, Stoke City, Montpellier, and Manchester City and then last year the MLS All Stars faced off against Roma at Sporting Park. Competitively, Sporting has played the likes of Real Esteli, Olimpia, Deportivo Saprissa, and Cruz Azul. You can probably immediately eliminate a team or two from that list but I'll let you all speculate on who the player is.

Seriously though check out the full Q&A it's quite good.