‘You can get housed tonight.’ Inside Sporting KC’s salute to clinching a playoff spot

Sporting Kansas City manager Peter Vermes has a microphone in his hand and a crowd waiting in the proverbial palm of it, and as far as people in his line of work go, there are few who embrace, perhaps even enjoy, the combination more.

And, well, this is sort of like prime-of-his-career Barry Bonds seeing a fastball hovering over the heart of the plate.

“You want to know what I’m gonna say?” he asks me before walking here, to the Budweiser Brew House at Children’s Mercy Park. And when I nod, he replies, “I bet you do.”

Some 173 days ago, he stood in precisely this spot, and he not-so-kindly referenced fans who had called for his job, their chants loud enough that it could be heard on a telecast.

It’s a bit of a different environment Saturday night. Sporting KC has just clinched a playoff spot with a resounding 3-1 win against Minnesota — along with some help from some friends — to complete the most unlikely playoff path in league history.

Really. Sporing KC is the first team to go winless through its initial 10 matches and still be playing soccer once the postseason arrives.

So back in the Brew House post-game Saturday, it seems as though Vermes had had the first couple of sentences saved in the drafts folder for quite some time.

“This is for the doubters,” he says. “You obviously wasted your time.”

Let’s be honest here: You’d have been a fool not to doubt this. Sporting KC had three goals in those 10 matches, another worst-in-league-history mark, and even captain Johnny Russell wondered aloud, with a group of media in front of him, “I genuinely don’t know how you fix it.”

His teammate, Daniel Salloi, had stopped watching other MLS matches, finding it “too annoying” to watch teams eke out results his own team could not.

“I couldn’t even look at the standings,” he said. “I knew where we were.”

There’s a reason Sporting securing a spot in the postseason probably looked a bit different than the other eight teams in the conference who did the same.

After their trip to the Brew House, Vermes and Russell, who scored twice, migrated back to the locker room. The players sat on cushioned chairs, the background church choir to an impassioned speech from the head coach, which eventually included this:

“You guys can get housed tonight,” Vermes said, “But ...”

“Yeaaaaahhhh!” veteran midfielder Roger Espinoza interjected before the next sentence even stood a chance.

This is not the story of an unlikely turnaround that transformed into some kind of postseason magic — at least not yet. I understand that. As Russell, whose two-goal performance came despite practicing just once all week, said, “We haven’t done anything yet.”

But should that render the story of what it took to get to this point — a playoff appearance on the team’s home field — completely meaningless? Of course not.

It’s pretty compelling — from players going on a retreat absent team management to the most important figure in franchise history explaining to ownership why he should still be employed.

And, as of Saturday, it’s also led to a ticket to the dance.

At least part of the point is that the players in that locker room consider that their story. They remember the low. Heck, they still talk about the low. Salloi recalls seeing half-empty stadiums by games’ conclusions and just knowing that more than a few fans didn’t think this team was worth sticking around for.

It took the best record in the Western Conference since May 1 to keep the turnaround alive for at least one more match — Wednesday night against visiting San Jose. Sporting KC led the West in points, wins and goals per game since that date, which is not exactly a small sample size. It covers 70% of the season.

You could certainly reverse the sentiment and note that it speaks to how truly miserable the opening two months were that Sporting KC still had to fight for a spot on Decision Day. If they’d even been just barely the worst team in soccer in March and April, we’d probably be wondering just how far Sporting can take this ride.

Maybe we should still be. But that has to part of the emotions in this, too.

For one night, though, it’s mostly about the past and present, not the potential future.

Sporting occupied a playoff spot for only a one-week stretch all season in June. But they had a chance anyway on Saturday, so long as they could secure a victory and have one of three other teams not secure one — FC Dallas, Portland and/or San Jose. Portland got blown out. San Jose tied Austin, which is why the Earthquakes will be traveling to KC on a short week.

Vermes knew none of that as Sporting’s match unfolded. It wasn’t until the final whistle that he asked, “Are we in?”

The word had trickled to some players’ iPhones during halftime that things weren’t looking good for Portland. Standing on the bench with four minutes left, Russell turned to a staffer and said, “OK, I have to know. Are we good?”

The players remained on the field to watch the final couple of minutes of San Jose’s draw with Austin FC on the JumboTron, which offered a one-two punch of back-to-back celebrations that the playoff appearance would include one match at Children’s Mercy Park.

A win this week would send Sporting KC on to a best-of-three series with St. Louis, and, well, who wouldn’t sign up for that?

Come to think of it, maybe it is about more than strictly the past and present, after all. The “but” in that Vermes sentence? That’s where it was going.

Eventually.

“We’ve been through a lot of (crap),” he said. “Which makes us more ready than any other team.”