Did Sporting Kansas City save Peter Vermes with miracle comeback? | OneFootball

As rough as some previous stretches have felt in the history of Peter Vermes's coaching tenure, Saturday night had the potential to be the worst yet.

Having already lost five competitive matches this season and an all-time club worst 10 straight overall, Sporting Kansas City looked burried by the early stages of the second half, down 3-0 and looking likely to concede again nearly every time Minnesota United mounted an attack.

It was the kind of evening that appeared more likely to end with Minnesota scoring five or six than with SKC mounting a ferocious rally, the kind that could've brought a result similar to Toronto FC's 7-1 drubbing at D.C. United that got Chris Armas fired in 2021, or the 6-2 defeat to LAFC that spelled the end of Luchi Gonzalez at San Jose last season.

That kind of outcome would've given ownership almost no choice but to turn the page on MLS' longest tenured manager, however much they obviously didn't want to. The alternative would be to risk signaling to fans that the current state of existence was acceptable, at one of one of MLS' most historic and decorated clubs.

But then Daniel Salloi, arguably Vermes' most consistently trustowrhy charge over a decade-and-a-half, scored a goal that turned the game on its head , and just might have saved his manager's job.

Salloi's first-touch poke on the run past Dayne St. Clair set of a three-goal, 13-minute avalanche to complete only the 19th rally from three down to earn at least a draw in MLS history.

Loons center back Morris Duggan turned a ball into his own goal on what was a rare defensive mistake this season from Eric Ramsay's club. Then Dejan Joveljic curled one in off the far post for his first goal with his new club.

And yet even then, SKC had to survive by the thinnest of margins. Joe Dickerson originally awarded a late penalty to Minnesota that was (correctly) overturned following a video review. And after Kelvin Yeboah did all the hard work to set up his teammate, Jeong Sang-bin sent a late wide-open effort skying over the crossbar.

Making history, and maybe repeating it

Amazingly, Vermes has now been involved in four of those 19 goal comebacks. He twice coached Kansas City sides that gave up three-goal leads to settle for draws. And he once played for a MetroStars side that completed the first-ever three-goal comeback in MLS play, rallying to a 3-3 draw (and eventual shootout win) over the Tampa Bay Mutiny on May 3 of 1996.

This one may have been the most likely of all because of the opposite headspaces occupied by a struggling Sporting side and a promising MNUFC group. It may have also been the most history-changing. Or it might just be history-delaying.

Only the following weeks will determine which. And even if Sporting does recover from this start to become a playoff contender, there's an argument such resiliency could just be prolonging the inevitable.

It was only two years ago around this time that Vermes was flirting with the end before, his side going nine matches without a win to start 2024, following a 12th-place Western Conference finish in 2023.

That group rallied to sneak into the postseason, then knocked off St. Louis in a Round One playoff series, and the season was declared a relative succes.

Then 2024 came around and it was the same rough start again, this time with less of a salvage job at the end, bringing us back to the point we began at today. It's not unlike the latter years of Ben Olsen's D.C. tenure, which ultimately lasted several years longer than some would have expected, but without a single major trophy in the last seven seasons.

This is now the eighth season without one for SKC, who lost last year's U.S. Open Cup Final. And while Wednesday night's rally may have kept Vermes safe for now, it will have to be the start of a prolonged reversal to have a lasting impact.