Peter Vermes is Major League Soccer's longest-tenured manager and has escaped previous lean stretches with his job at Sporting Kansas City still in tact. But Saturday night's 2-1 loss to Bruce Arena's San Jose Earthquakes may make ownership wonder why their patience is so necessary.
Vermes is one of only a few MLS managers who doubles as the club's top personnel executive. On Saturday night, he faced another in Arena, the all-time MLS wins leader. And in Arena's second game in charge of San Jose, his Quakes looked like a far more complete team than SKC, a group that had been under Vermes' guidance since 2009.
Sporting had already lost their first three competitive matches, though the details of those could be mostly forgiven. Lionel Messi starred and scored in two of them. The other came on the road at Austin FC, one of MLS' tougher away environments.
Who is the new guy here?
But whatever patience Vermes has earned for winning an MLS Cup and three U.S. Open Cups in his first eight seasons has to be wearing thin after watching a thorough undressing by an opponent that, theoretically, should be far earlier in its rebuild than Vermes in his latest SKC renovation project.
And there isn't really an excuse of finances either. Arena's Quakes have been drastically overhauled, but mostly with relatively affordable talent that was already in MLS. Their splashiest additions were Cristian Arango, who despite scoring goals in bunches has proven disposable to his two previous MLS teams, and Josef Martinez, the one-time MLS Golden Boot winner who can still put chances away but hasn't had the same spring in his step since a catastrophic ACL tear suffered in 2020.
Presumably, both were available to an SKC squad that has only one non-penalty goal in 360 competitive minutes. Predicatbly, both scored on Saturday night before the match was 20 minutes old.
In fairness, Vermes' big offseason addition Dejan Joveljic also found the net, but that was from the spot on a penalty more fortunate than deserved, earned when Manu Garcia's shot was handled by Ian Harkes.
And which team was playing down a man?
But the real humiliation came later, when Quakes midfielder Hernan Lopez comitted his second bookable offense in the 52nd minute, requiring the visitors to play short-handed for the remainder. Vermes responded by making three early subs, but the result was a lot of huffing and puffing and not so much as one attempt on goal while Sporting played a man up. This against the same team that conceded an MLS record 78 regular season goals a season ago.
Vermes deserves plenty of acclaim for his career accomplishments, and if and when its over in Kansas City, another shot at an MLS manager. But the notion that it's OK for every other season to be a roster overhaul doesn't hold as much water as it used to, given the diverse avenues of talent acquisition now available to the league's 30 clubs. And it's pretty clear that has evolved in a way that leaves SKC less talented relative to its opponents than it used to be.
That was never more clear than when Bruce Arena's San Jose Earthquakes came into town on Saturday night with a group that looked like it had been playing together for years, outclassing the group that actually has.