Sporting Weekly Round Up; SKC win, draw, and Jack Harry loses.

With the ball barely removed from Sporting's net, substitute C.J. Sapong wove his way into the teeth of the Earthquake's defense and fed Bunbury for a simple finish that gave Kansas City a 1-1 draw and yet another valuable point with two regular season games remaining. 

Bunbury rescues Sporting KC from the jaws of defeat with his late equalizer against San Jose via MLSsoccer.com

Arnaud, the 50th overall pick in the 5th round of the 2002 MLS SuperDraft out of the NCAA Division II's West Texas A & M, has played 10 season for Sporting Kansas City -- the most among all active players in MLS with a single club -- during which he has recorded 43 goal and 34 assists.

With the his start in the San Jose match, Arnaud now holds the record at 238 games played for Sporting Kansas City via SportingKC.com 

Five Sporting Kansas City players are expected to join their respective national teams for international matches, the club announced on Thursday. Peterson Joseph, Craig Rocastle, Teal Bunbury, Shavar Thomas, and Roger Espinoza have been invited to represent their countries during the upcoming FIFA international match dates, scheduled from October 7th through the 11th. 

It's the second call-up for Bunbury under new USMNT coach Jurgen Klinsmann via SportingKC.com 

For the fifth time this season, a Matt Besler throw-in resulted in a Sporting Kansas City goal as Julius James looped a header over his own goalkeeper to give Sporting three points that put them in first place in the Eastern Conference on 44 points through 31 games.

Besler's throw-ins have become a huge weapon for Sporting Kansas City via SportingKC.com 

Sporting Kansas City overcame the Columbus Crew by a 2-1 scoreline Wednesday night at LIVESTRONG Sporting Park. The win sees Sporting Kansas City take sole possession of first place in the Eastern Conference with just three matches left to play in the 2011 MLS regular season.

Sporting Kansas City take three points from their mid-week meeting with Columbus via SportingKC.com

"Oh, by the way, here's another of my pet-peeves about soccer. The new TV announcer was imported from England. At least, he sounds like an Englishman. I guess that's the stylish thing in this sport. Everything seems to have a Europeon theme to it. That bothers me a little bit. This is America, isn't it? Don't get me started."

NBC "news anchor" Jack Harry rants about why he hasn't fully embraced Sporting Kansas City. Among his reasons; Sporting Kansas City don't have an official nickname, and their play-by-play announcer is from Britain. Needless to say, I think Sporting Kansas City fans let Jack know exactly how they feel about his thoughts via twitter.

 

"Not really sure where I am at the moment, however, I'm quite sure.... I'm English." 

Sporting Kansas City play-by-play announcer Callum Williams confirms Jack Harry's worst fear that, in fact, he is an Englishman via twitter.

Apparently this was originated at the Naval Academy and dates back to 2003. The earliest recording I can find of the Naval Academy chanting "I Believe That We Will Win" is 2009. But they did have shirts printed up in 2003 with "IBTWWW." Recordings of this showed up from college basketball teams like Utah State and San Diego State.

Finding the origins of Sporting Kansas City chants via AdAstraSKC.org

This is something that Sporting tends to get nailed with and it was very good seeing Sporting pull this off. Well, that is unless you are an Earthquake fan, then welcome to what has happened to Sporting so much this season. Although it usually wasn't that fast. The TV was still showing the replay of the Earthquakes goal and all of a sudden everything went crazy because San Jose, who probably weren't even in starting positions let CJ Sapong drive down the field, and give a great pass to Teal Bunbury, who hammered the ball into goal to get Sporting the equalizing goal.

Recap of the Sporting KC / San Jose match via The Oz Blog

For Arnaud, it seems like only yesterday when the club, which was called the Wizards back then, practiced and played all of it's games in grossly over sized Arrowhead Stadium, where the players shared a locker room with the Chiefs' cheerleaders. 

Davy Arnaud has come a long way via TheFull90

Sporting KC had a chance to really move away from some of the teams in the Eastern Conference but some poor finishing on the few chances created against the San Jose Earthquakes kept them from taking all three points. In a game that was fairly unexciting for much of the game turned wild in the 85th minute as San Jose grabbed the lead only for Teal Bunbury to equalize 30 seconds later to give the team a share of the points.

Sporting Kansas City waste opportunity to pad their Eastern Conference lead via DownTheByline.com 

"It just starts from trusting each other," Myers said. "If I'm going to go and make the overlap and he comes inside to get the ball, whether or not we thread the needle and get a cross off or lose the ball, we know we're going to be there to cover for each other. Having that trust allows us to have a free range of movement."

Kamara, Myers combine to provide attacking threat on right via SportingKC.com