KC Reporter

Sporting Kansas City will travel to face Real Salt Lake on Saturday, September 13, at America First Field in Sandy, Utah. The match is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. CT and will be broadcast on MLS Season Pass via Apple TV, with local radio coverage available on Sports Radio 810 WHB.

Both teams are nearing the end of the regular season and remain outside playoff positions in the Western Conference. Sporting Kansas City currently sits eight points below the playoff line after a recent 2-1 home defeat to Austin FC. Real Salt Lake is four points out of playoff positioning but holds games in hand over several conference rivals.

The last meeting between Sporting KC and Real Salt Lake ended in a 1-1 draw at Children’s Mercy Park on June 28. Johnny Russell scored for RSL before halftime, while Erik Thommy equalized for Kansas City in the second half. Their previous encounter at America First Field saw RSL win 1-0 thanks to an 81st-minute goal from Chicho Arango.

RSL leads the all-time regular season series with an 18-13-10 record through 41 matches. Sporting KC has won six times in 21 away games against RSL during regular season play and notably defeated RSL in both the 2013 MLS Cup final and the 2018 Western Conference Semifinals.

Several players have connections to both clubs. Andrew Brody, now with Sporting KC, made over a hundred appearances for RSL between stints from 2016 and again from 2021 to 2024. Johnny Russell spent seven seasons with Sporting KC before joining RSL this year, scoring a total of 67 goals for Kansas City—tied for second most in club history alongside Dom Dwyer and Daniel Salloi.

This season, Sporting Kansas City has recorded a league mark of seven wins, sixteen losses, and six draws (27 points), ranking thirteenth in the West with a goal difference of -15 (44 goals scored, 59 conceded). On the road they have three wins out of fourteen matches played.

The team has shown resilience by gaining fourteen points from losing positions—fifth most among MLS teams—and has scored nearly half its goals after the sixtieth minute this year. Dejan Joveljic leads Sporting’s attack with seventeen goals this season; his tally is third highest among all players league-wide and ranks as one of the top single-season performances in club history behind Preki (1996) and Dom Dwyer (2014). Joveljic also became only the third player ever to score fifteen or more goals in consecutive regular seasons with different clubs.

Goalkeeper John Pulskamp stands out defensively with ninety-nine saves—second most in MLS—and he is unique among club keepers for recording multiple assists within a single campaign.

Other key contributors include Daniel Salloi (seven goals and four assists), Mason Toye (three recent goal contributions), Jansen Miller (most minutes played among SuperDraft rookies), Jacob Bartlett (youngest player to reach twenty-five appearances this season), Shapi Suleymanov (second-most dribbles into penalty area league-wide), Erik Thommy (eight goal contributions), and Manu Garcia who leads the team with nine assists despite missing several recent matches due to injury.

Real Salt Lake enters Saturday’s game eleventh place in their conference standings following three straight losses since August 10th but remains within reach of postseason contention due to two games-in-hand compared to nearby rivals. They have struggled offensively this year, ranking last among Western Conference teams with just twenty-eight goals scored; only D.C. United has fewer across MLS overall.

Midfielder Diego Luna leads RSL’s scoring chart with eight goals while Diogo Goncalves contributes both key passes and shots on target as well as three goals himself. Goalkeeper Rafael Cabral is notable as an ever-present starter throughout all twenty-seven regular season matches so far.

Milestones approaching include Jake Davis nearing his hundredth appearance for Sporting KC across all competitions; Memo Rodriguez one short of fifty career outings; Andrew Brody about to make his hundredth career start; Tim Leibold close to five thousand minutes played; Manu Garcia approaching fifty professional assists; Daniel Salloi tied second all-time on club scoring charts—and soon set to become just the eleventh player reaching twenty thousand minutes played for Kansas City.