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I was just complaining yesterday that SKC only had one (or kind of two) official games on the schedule for their month or so they were spending in Tucson, Arizona. Well the club and FC Tucson fixed that problem with their schedule release.
Sporting Kansas City now have six games officially announced. Five of them are against MLS clubs (though they play the Revs twice), and the sixth will be as well, pending the results of the Desert Diamond Cups first three games, Sporting will possibly play one of their first opponents again, or get a game against a fifth team. Remember last year, they qualified for the finals but instead chose to play the Houston Dynamo to get a different opponent. Below is the current schedule:
Desert Friendlies
- Tuesday, January 31, 2017 at 12 PM CT - San Jose Earthquakes
- Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at 12 PM CT - New England Revolution
Desert Diamond Cup
- Wednesday, February 15, 2017 at 12 PM CT - Colorado Rapids
- Saturday, February 18, 2017 at 4:30 PM CT - New York Red Bulls
- Wednesday, February 22, 2017 at 12 PM CT - New England Revolution
- Saturday, February 25, 2017 at 4:30 CT - NYCFC (3rd Place Game)
The two teams competing in the tournament that Sporting don’t currently have a game scheduled against are New York City FC and the Houston Dynamo. I wouldn’t be surprised at all for the teams to just agree to play one of them regardless of the outcome of the tournament just to get a chance to see another club match-up against theirs.
During the friendlies Real Salt Lake, the Portland Timbers and Seattle Sounders will also be in town. It’s interesting that there are so many options for opponents and SKC have been forced to play New England twice. FC Tucson hasn’t updated their site to reflect the new games being added, so the only way to know is look for individual schedule releases from the teams involved. A majority of the teams haven’t put out their schedules at this point.
An interesting side note for the tournament match-up with RBNY. They will be playing a CONCACAF Champions League game on the 22nd of February, so it seems unlikely they will field many starters in that February 18th game against Sporting.
Sporting KC have indicated they will broadcast the Desert Diamond Cup games on SportingKC.com. There is no indication that the Friendlies will be broadcast. Last season, not even all the DDC games were broadcast. Only the games played on the larger field at the Kino Sports Complex made it online, the others just had highlights.
As always, I’ll be making the journey to Tucson (I mean, I live in a Phoenix suburb, it’s the least I can do) as much as possible. With Tuesday games during the friendlies and real life likely to get in the way, no promises on that front. Anything on a Saturday will be easy.
Stay with us at The Blue Testament for more preseason coverage and follow me on Twitter @PlayFor90 for live updates from the field. Last year I was able to get into a closed door scrimmage against FC Tucson that had Connor Hallisey bagging two goals and Justin Mapp looking fantastic (and getting his initial injury). We all saw how that worked out, but it’s fun to see regardless.