The history of Major League Soccer is littered with awful teams and awful seasons. It’s early going yet, but Sporting Kansas City is starting to make a very good argument that they’re putting together the worst campaign in league history – especially after this weekend’s 5-0 drubbing by the Chicago Fire.
On paper alone, SKC have been staggeringly bad. After nine matches, the club has but a single victory, an unconvincing, 2-1 win over an LA Galaxy side that’s been navigating their own atrocious campaign. At minus-18, SKC are well on their way to shattering the record for worst-ever goal differential in a single season, having scored only seven goals through about a third of their campaign, a mark that also threatens the league’s all-time record.
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For years, Sporting have been held aloft as a model MLS franchise, the first example of an MLS original that reinvented and rejuvenated itself. They were among the league’s most consistently competitive teams for over a decade (even if they rarely made a deep run in the playoffs), but there were signs that something like this downfall was coming.
The club has gotten progressively worse over the past three years. No team in MLS has fewer points over that timeframe. The departure of Peter Vermes last year after over a decade in the technical area and in the front office – Vermes was both head coach and the chief soccer officer for his entire tenure – needed to be done, but a leadership void naturally followed. Sporing appointed widely respected former NYCFC sporting director David Lee as sporting director, but expiring contracts and declined options left the club with just 12 players entering the 2026 offseason. And the most experienced of those, forward Daniel Salloi, was soon traded to Toronto FC.
Still, there was a little hope that with more roster flexibility than any MLS team is likely to have without being an expansion team, the club might finally start turning a corner and building for the future.
Not so. SKC has rolled out something akin to a USL roster this year, though even that assessment may prove generous given the fact that Sporting got positively obliterated in the US Open Cup by the Colorado Springs Switchbacks, a midtable USL Championship side. Lee, alongside first-year head coach Rafa Wicky, says the team have a longer-term plan, a roster build that will start in earnest this summer with the addition of recruitment staff that never existed under Vermes. In the meantime, what could’ve been a transitional year has turned into – as of now – the worst season in MLS history.
There are, of course, other candidates. DC United had more own goals (4) than their leading scorer, Luis Silva, scored (3) during a staggeringly bad 2013 campaign, though that team somehow managed to win the Open Cup. FC Cincinnati put up a trifecta of awful campaigns early in their history which included a 20 (!) game winless streak in 2021. Reaching back further to teams like the NY/NJ MetroStars and Tampa Bay Mutiny feels more statistically challenging given the fact that the league lacked draws for several years and played significantly fewer matches.
Online discourse among SKC’s faithful seems to center around whether this is a coaching or talent problem. At the moment, it certainly feels like both, and however you cut it, this is by far the worst team in Kansas City’s 30-year history, by a wide margin. – PM
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In news that will spark either joy or heated debate (or both!) among USMNT fans, Matt Turner is the best goalkeeper in the league right now, even as he’s expected to be a backup at this summer’s World Cup behind NYC FC’s Matt Freese.
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The good news a welcome change of pace for Turner, who was between the sticks for the United States’ 5-2 loss to Beligum last month. Though Turner didn’t cover himself in glory in the effort, his performance was far from the USMNT’s biggest problem that afternoon, with head coach Mauricio Pochettino somewhat absolving him of responsibility in his post-game remarks.
His play with New England this year unquestionably puts him amongst the league’s elite: using Fotmob’s algorithm, Turner has prevented just over six goals in 2026, a league best. He’s done so while facing around 2.5 shots more per game than Freese, and about a half a goal more in xG as well.
Turner also passes the eye test. His efforts against Miami last weekend – and Atlanta a week prior – were fearless, and Turner bared no responsibility for either goal he allowed in either of those two matches.
Which leaves Mauricio Pochettino with a call to make. Poch has clearly favored Freese over the balance of his time with the USMNT, but he’s also shown a willingness to roll out players based on current form. If that’s the math he’ll use in a little over a month when the US faces Paraguay in their group stage opener, Turner feels like a better fit. – PM
