KANSAS CITY, Mo. – It may be the very beginning of preseason preparations around Major League Soccer, but there are no signs of heavy legs in Kansas City.
Understandably, most clubs devote a significant amount of time to rounding their squads into top shape during the season’s first formative weeks, but Sporting manager Peter Vermes said the players in camp have already impressed the coaching staff from a fitness perspective.
"It's amazing the improvement from last year to this year,” Vermes said. “I'm telling you, it's incredible. What it tells me is two things: One, the culture has changed, which was something huge for me last year. Second is, there's a strong buy-in. The guys understand the style in which we play right now. … They get that they need a certain fitness level to play the way we play.
“They’ve also taken it seriously enough to come back prepared already so that gives us the opportunity to not spend so much time on fitness during the preseason, but to focus on soccer. That gives us another leg up."
[inline_node:327341]Led by fitness and conditioning coach Mateus Manoel, the team underwent the dreaded beep test this week as well as other agility tests to determine where the players stood from an endurance and overall athleticism standpoint.
GALLERY: Sporting KC preseason training
Manoel, who was with the team fulltime for about half of 2010, will be with Sporting from the very start in 2011, which bodes well for a club building around a high-pressure style of play that puts fitness at a premium.
“I think everybody has realized and seen that that’s how we play,” captain Davy Arnaud said. “If you want to play and want to be a part of it, you have to be fit. You have to be willing to defend and press and work hard for 90 minutes. That’s the way it is, and guys have been taking that seriously in the offseason.”
In fact, even the players on trial and the former college players picked up in the SuperDraft are keeping pace with Sporting’s regulars, who are fresh off their offseason fitness programs.
Supplemental Draft pick Sam Scales was the team’s best performer in the beep test, followed closely by first-round SuperDraft pick C.J. Sapong.
"The new guys that are in, the great thing is, they have enough of a base that it will be easy for us to accelerate them to catch up with the rest of the guys,” Vermes said, “which is also good because we're not starting so low down to try to get those guys up there."
With his charges already at a pretty good fitness level, Vermes can spend the majority of preseason focusing on his team’s formation and specifics on the attacking and defensive sides of the ball, comfortable in the fact that his team values what the coaching staff is preaching.
“The mentality has been set by the coaches from last year,” forward Kei Kamara said. “Coming in from the first day, everybody showed that they were ready. Everyone is here to work.”
