Sporting Kansas City vs Vancouver Whitecaps Match Preview

The MLS Cup continues in Florida and today, Sporting Kansas face Vancouver Whitecaps at Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando. The games are held behind closed doors due to COVID-19 pandemic. In the case of a draw, a penalty shoot-out will follow.

Sporting Kansas took the first place in the fourth group after two wins over Colorado 3-2 and Salt Lake 2-0. Although they had a bad start in the competition, suffering a defeat to Minnesota United by 2-1, they kept a balance and with the quality of their roster, they managed to qualify in the knockout stage. Their goal is nothing else than winning the trophy. Fontas and Gutiérrez are tonight's missings for Kansas.

On the other hand, Vancouver made a great upset, qualifying in the last 16 of the competition, despite their bad performance in the first two games suffering two defeats, 3-4 to San Jose 3-4 and 0-3 to Seattle 3-0. In the third game of the group, they took a big 0-2 victory over Chicago and managed to qualify. Without having big ambitions for this tournament, and many missings on their roster, the team from Canada managed surprisingly to qualify. The competition is harsher from now on, and tonight, against Kansas, they have to give their best to qualify.

Kansas is by far superior here and they are deservedly the big favorites to qualify in the next round. They have the quality that is needed to continue far in the tournament. Vancouver, on the other hand, managed surprisingly to qualify, but I think their journey in very near to come to an end, as they already did a huge excess. I expect Sporting Kansas to get an easy qualification today for the quarterfinals of the tournament. Sporting Kansas to win, covering also the handicap of -2.5 goals is my call in this one.