According to Pat Noonan, nothing will be taken for granted on Saturday by FC Cincinnati, where Sporting Kansas City was still led by Interim coach Kerry Zavagnin after the resignation of Peter Vermes last month.
Vermes left the club at the end of March after a term of office of 16 years, after a disappointing start of the 2025 season in which SKC had only picked up one point of their opening six games.
“It's a strange time. Peter [Vermes]Really, he built that club in many ways to what it is today. And I certainly have a lot of respect for him, and what he intended for the game in this country, “FC Cincinnati head coach Noonan told the official club website.
'I know Kerry [Zavagnin] Also, and a really good guy, of course he now has the chance to be the head coach and won two of the last three. So you know, the results have improved.
“I think we are not drastically anticipating what it looked like with Kerry … So we will try to simplify it with the last three games.”
Zavagnin has now been in charge of KC for three games, after he has won two and lost one.
Despite the small sample size, Noonan believes that he and his team have enough to judge prior to Saturday's game.
“What we expect, I think, as far as they are defensive, there is some similarities with Chicago with a number of different urgent ideas that we have seen,” he explained.
“So that is something that the last few games stand out. I think it is about organization, we have not seen them stand up in a too aggressive way. It is clearly urgent times when their real pressure, those figures, that data, that data shows that it is increasing.
“But it's from a deeper positioning. So we will see if that is the case this weekend. With the ball they are very good with some of the switches of playing.
“How they use their front three, how they use their outdoor ridges at overlapping moments. So I would say that they are some of the early things that are standing out.”
Training for more #sportingkc pic.twitter.com/4PleaZDGO3
– Sporting Kansas City (@sportingkc) April 23, 2025
Players to watch
FC Cincinnati – Evander
Evander scored for the third time in his MLS career in three straight matches in the regular season and the first at Cincinnati. The longest games with a goal in the MLS history of Cincinnati is four (Lucho Acosta twice, Brandon Vázquez once).
This season, the Brazilian is the same highest scorer in MLS, after he has scored six, with five of those goals in his last three performances.
Sporting KC – Shapi Suleymanov
Suleymanov has included an assist in three immediately matches, including setting up the 24th minute goal of Manu Garcia on Saturday. The last player of Kansas City who records an assist in four straight regular season matches was Chris Klein in 2004.
The Russian comes with three target contributions in its last four MLS competitions.
Match forecast: Cincinnati Win
Prior to their 5-3 victory gone to San Jose last weekend, Sporting KC had not won in 11 matches in all competitions (D1 L11).
Sporting KC has not won a consecutive road in the competition since a run of three games between July and August 2021.
In the meantime, Cincinnati has won four consecutive games of the regular season with every victory with a margin of one goal.
Nineteen of Cincinnati's 24 regular seasonal victories have been through one target margins since the beginning of the 2024 season.
Opta wins probability
Cincinnati – 61.5%
Sporting KC – 18.2%
Drawing – 20.3%