Sporting Kansas City made a huge statement of intent on Saturday afternoon, crushing the Montreal Impact 7-1 to give the club plenty of momentum heading into their Concacaf Champions League semifinal against Monterrey on Thursday.
Where does Saturday's romp figure in the MLS history books? It's just the 12th time in MLS history that a team has won a match by six goals or more.
Curiously, the first team to win by six was the Kansas City Wizards (SKC's previous moniker), who beat the New York Red Bulls (then the MetroStars) 6-0 on June 20, 1999. SKC did it one other time before Saturday, beating Vancouver 6-0 on April 20, 2018, and were also on the losing end of a 6-0 match, against FC Dallas on September 1, 2009.
Other six-goal contests happened in 2006 (Red Bulls 6, Real Salt Lake 0, on August 26), 2009 (RSL 6, New England Revolution 0, on April 25), 2014 (LA Galaxy 6, Colorado Rapids 0, on September 5), and 2018 (RSL 6, Colorado 0, on August 25).
Before Saphir Taider's 89th-minute goal went in to close the margin to six, SKC had the chance at a 7-goal win, which remains the greatest margin of victory in MLS history, and has only happened four previous times:
- June 4, 1998: LA Galaxy 8, Dallas Burn 1
- July 4, 2001: Chicago Fire 7, Kansas City Wizards 0
- May 21, 2016: New York Red Bulls 7, NYCFC 0
- Sept.13, 2017: Atlanta United 7, New England Revolution 0
In another little bit of MLS history, SKC hat trick hero Krisztian Nemeth also made it three straight years that a Sporting player has scored a hat trick, which follows a five-year run without one:
