Through 13 games in the 2014 Major League Soccer regular season, Sporting Kansas City has featured 13 different starting lineups.
That trend continued on Tuesday as Sporting Kansas City drew 1-1 with the New York Red Bulls at Sporting Park while missing the team's three longest-tenured field players in Matt Besler, Chance Myers and Graham Zusi. In their places were homegrown defender Kevin Ellis, 19-year-old Igor Juliao and the night's goal scorer Antonio Dovale. Add in rookie midfielder Alex Martinez to the first XI and it was Ellis who boasted the most MLS experience of that group by making the sixth start of his career.
Roster rotation is a necessary evil for any MLS manager, however Peter Vermes' quest for any resemblance of consistency in player personnel selection has been hampered by a multitude of converging factors in 2014. Early on, there was the task of juggling multiple competitions during the CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinals and most recently, schedule congestion has come to the forefront with seven games in the month of May.
There have also been a pair of season-ending injuries to defenders Chance Myers and Ike Opara. There has been extended international action for Matt Besler, Lawrence Olum and Graham Zusi. There have been one-game suspensions served by Oriol Rosell, Aurelien Collin and Erik Palmer-Brown.
Regardless, the results speak for themselves. Twenty-four different players have started an MLS match for the club this campaign, most of all 19 teams, and only two players on Sporting KC's active roster have yet to make an appearance: back-up goalkeeper Andy Gruenebaum and rookie midfielder Victor Munoz, who was added to the team's roster earlier this month.
Nevertheless, Friday's draw lifted Sporting Kansas City into sole possession of second place in the Eastern Conference with 19 points and a 5-4-4 record thanks in large part to a contributions by committee approach.
On the attacking end of the field, Dovale became the eighth different MLS goal scorer for Sporting Kansas City in 2014 with his ninth minute goal against New York. On the defensive end, last night was the 10th different backline deployed in the team's first 13 games of the year and yet Sporting KC's 1.00 goals against average is second best in MLS.
#SKCvNY POSTGAME: VERMES
- Gardner, Besler, Collin, Ellis
- Jerome, Besler, Collin, Sinovic
- Ellis, Collin, Opara, Sinovic
- Sinovic, Opara, Besler, Ellis
- Myers, Collin, Besler, Sinovic (x4)
- Myers, Olum, Besler, Sinovic
- Juliao, Collin, Besler, Sinovic
- Myers, Palmer-Brown, Sinovic
- Juliao, Myers, Ellis, Sinovic
- Juliao, Collin, Ellis, Sinovic
Though the road ahead won't get any easier in the short term with away matches versus two Eastern Conference foes immediately behind Sporting KC in the standings -- first at D.C. United on Saturday then to Houston the following Friday -- Vermes believes the obstacles overcome now will pay dividends moving forward.
"I have confidence in all the guys on our roster. If I didn't, they wouldn't be on the roster," Vermes said in Tuesday's postgame press conference. "What's happened is some guys have just been accelerated into having to play on a regular basis, and maybe more so than we would've thought based on some injuries, based on some call-ups. All of that has, like I said, accelerated their entrance into the team. My feeling is, in the long term, it's going to benefit us."
