Manager and Technical Director Peter Vermes has inked a new contract with Sporting Kansas City through the 2019 MLS season, committing his immediate future to a club where he has won three major trophies and ascended into elite company among Major League Soccer's most successful coaches.
In Tuesday's press conference regarding the announcement, Vermes spoke thankfully and vibrantly about the previous decade — he joined Kansas City as a technical director in 2006 — while also making it clear that the club ventures forward with great ambition. Sporting Kansas City has become, in his own words, a "model franchise of MLS," and that will remain the standard as he continues his stint as the league's longest-tenured manager.
An emphasis on youth
"The main objective is to be extremely competitive and to continue to win," Vermes said before outlining the team's blueprint for sustained title challenges. More than ever, this blueprint casts great importance on the Swope Park Rangers and the Sporting Kansas City Academy as the club tries to build from within.
"We want to get to a place where the majority of our roster in the future is made up of players that we’ve developed," Vermes said. "That is a huge, huge piece of the long-term success in this organization. It’s one thing to stay competitive; it’s another to develop from within. We’ve already shown some signs of that, but we have to get to a place where we’re developing the top-class player."
Vermes explained that when Academy players train with the Sporting KC first team, their familiarity with the team's model of play helps them acclimate more seamlessly than older, more mature players who join from other clubs. For this reason, so much of Sporting Kansas City's future lies within the Academy and the Swope Park Rangers.
Active in the market
While an emphasis on youth development becomes increasingly prominent, Vermes was also quick to assert that Sporting Kansas City will still be an active player in the international transfer market. The club's approach, however, will be different than that of LA Galaxy, New York City FC, Toronto FC and other MLS sides who spend heavily on Designated Players.
"Every year that I’ve gone to the ownership group and I’ve asked them to increase our (transfer) budget outside of the cap, they’ve always been very willing," Vermes said. "I think we’re in a position to compete from that perspective, but we’re always going to look for different players than other teams. And when I say 'other teams,' I should be more specific about the higher-spending teams. That doesn’t work within our model."
Vermes described Sporting KC as extremely active during this summer's transfer window, but inflated prices on players prevented any deals — Designated Player or not — from going through. Although the club had necessary funds to make certain acquisitions, Vermes proceeded with caution.
"One of the things we’re not going to do is spend money in a way that’s going to hamstring us in the future based on a player not coming to fruition or us just spending all our money on one guy." Vermes said. "[New signings] have to serve a very important purpose for our organization, and we won’t jeopardize our philosophy, we won’t overspend, and we won’t sacrifice the team for any of those players."
During the press conference, Mike Illig of the Sporting Club ownership group lauded Vermes' ability to identify talented, high-potential players from abroad who weren't necessarily household names in the soccer world. Among them were Aurelien Collin and Krisztian Nemeth. Both experienced substantial success with Sporting Kansas City after struggling to excel in Europe. Collin and Nemeth have since departed, but Vermes created value for them beyond their stay in Kansas City.
"As we move forward, we’ll continue to be very active in the market," Vermes said. "We are right now. I’m hoping that there will be some announcements imminent in regards to some acquisitions that we’re looking at, but as you guys all know, they take time."
Where he wants to be
When U.S. Soccer parted ways with former head coach Jurgen Klinsmann earlier this month, many soccer pundits across the country considered Vermes a viable replacement. When this topic surfaced in Tuesday's press conference, Vermes was candid in expressing his delight to stay in Kansas City.
"In any high-performance business, there are always a lot of things that can be rumbling around, if you will. But at the end of the day, I’ll use the same line I used when I did my [U.S. Soccer] Hall of Fame speech: I’m exactly where I want to be, so the other things really don’t matter."
Sporting KC President Jake Reid touched on the matter as well, emphasizing that Vermes' contract extension had been a priority since early 2016.
"Very quickly after the season ended, it was a quick sit-down and we were all very much aligned on what we wanted to do," Reid said. "We were aware of what else was going on in the soccer community (but) I think for us, that was just unique timing. This was something that we were focused on at the start of 2016, and we dove in as soon as the season ended."
