Sporting Kansas City closes out a week on the road with the club’s third away match in seven days this Saturday night when Sporting visits 2025 expansion side San Diego FC at Snapdragon Stadium. Kickoff is set for 9:30 p.m. CT and will be available to stream on MLS Season Pass. The game will also be broadcast locally on the radio via Sports Radio 810 WHB.
1. BRUTAL ROAD SCHEDULE CONTINUES IN SAN DIEGO
Sporting Kansas City continued a tough stretch of matches in May with a 2-2 come-from-behind draw against rivals St. Louis at Energizer Park on Wednesday night and is now preparing to jet back to the west coast to face off against 2025 expansion team San Diego FC at Snapdragon Stadium on Saturday night.
Sporting has gone 3-3-1 since Kerry Zavagnin took over as interim head coach at the end of March, with Wednesday’s comeback serving as the first draw. Sporting showed serious resilience to come back against St. Louis, as the club had lost 24 consecutive regular season road matches when trailing by multiple goals in the 70th minute prior to Wednesday’s match.
Instead, goals from Tim Leibold and Dejan Joveljic off assists from Daniel Salloi and Shapi Suleymanov earned Sporting a point and sealed the season-series against their rivals. The last time Sporting rescued a road result when trailing by multiple goals in the 70th minute of a regular season match was more than a decade ago on April 25, 2015 in a 4-4 draw at Houston.
Sporting had lost 13 consecutive regular season matches when trailing by multiple goals at halftime entering this season and the has now come back to earn draws in both matches when trailing by multiple goals at halftime this year, having also come back from a 3-0 deficit to earn a 3-3 draw against Minnesota United on March 15, 2025.
2. BATTLING EXPANSION FOES
Sporting Kansas City is set to close out a road-heavy week of matches when the team heads back to the west coast to face off against 2025 expansion side San Diego FC at Snapdragon Stadium on Saturday night. It’s Sporting KC’s first clash with an expansion side since sweeping St. Louis in the 2023 MLS Cup Playoffs, leaving just 2022 expansion club Charlotte FC as the only MLS teams Sporting has yet to face.
Sporting’s last set of showdowns with an expansion team came with St. Louis in 2023, with Sporting dropping the regular-season series 1-2-0. Sporting fell twice on the road that season by 4-0 and 4-1 scorelines on May 20 and Sept. 30, 2023, respectively. Sporting won the only meeting at Children’s Mercy Park that year 2-1 behind an Alan Pulido brace, before sweeping St. Louis in the MLS Cup Playoffs Round One Best-of-3 series with a 4-1 win on the road and 2-1 win at home.
Sporting KC has historically performed well in inaugural matchups against expansion sides in MLS, going 11-5-5 in their first-ever matches with new teams. Sporting KC is also 21-10-10 overall against teams that are in the midst of their expansion campaign. Saturday’s match is the first of two meetings with San Diego in 2025, with the Californians visiting Children’s Mercy Park on Aug. 9, 2025.
3. JOVELJIC NAMED TO TEAM OF THE MATCHDAY
Major League Soccer announced on Thursday the MLS Team of the Matchday for Matchday 13 of the regular season with Sporting Kansas City forward Dejan Joveljic honored as one of the top 20 players in the league after the team’s 2-2 draw at rivals St. Louis on Wednesday.
The highest rated player in the match by Opta, Joveljic headed home a free kick from Shapi Suleymanov in the 77th minute for the game-tying goal which secured the season series against St. Louis and marked the first time in more than a decade that Sporting earned a point on the road when trailing by multiple goals in the 70th minute of a regular season match.
The Serbian striker now has a team-leading six goals on the year - three of which have come against St. Louis - and is one of five players in MLS with six or more goals in each of the last four seasons.
4. SALLOI CLIMBS THE CHARTS
Sporting Kansas City forward and Academy product Daniel Salloi continued his excellent 2025 season on Wednesday, recording his third assist of the season to help spark the comeback in the 2-2 draw with rivals St. Louis at Energizer Park.
Salloi led the team with six shots on the night and produced a brilliant header to set up Tim Leibold’s goal that got Sporting back into the game. Salloi is tied with Dejan Joveljic for the team lead with seven goal contributions in 2025.
Salloi, who now has seven goal contributions (two goals and five assists) in 10 MLS appearances against St. Louis, moved into a tie for sixth in club history with 40 regular season assists alongside longtime teammate and friend Johnny Russell.
The assist gives Salloi 100 career goal contributions in MLS competitions (56 goals and 44 assists in the regular season and playoffs combined). Salloi has 91 goal contributions for SKC in the regular season (51 goals, 40 assists) and 110 goal contributions (64 goals, 46 assists) in all competitions, both of which rank fourth most in club history.
5. LEIBOLD SPARKS COMEBACK
Sporting Kansas City defender Tim Leibold made the most of an unexpected substitute appearance on Wednesday to help spur his side back from a 2-0 deficit to claim a 2-2 draw on the road against cross-state rivals St. Louis at Energizer Park.
Only entering the game in the 56th minute after halftime substitute Nemanja Radoja picked up a quad injury, Leibold was a threatening presence down the left-hand side of Sporting’s attack and scored his first goal of the season in the 71st minute when he combined brilliantly with Daniel Salloi before firing beyond countryman Roman Burki to make the score 2-1.
The goal was Leibold’s first of the season and first goal since June 29, 2024 when he scored the opener in a 2-0 win over Austin FC at Children’s Mercy Park.
Sporting KC has now scored four goals via substitutes this season, second most in MLS behind Saturday’s opponents San Diego (5).
