Blue Links: St. Patrick’s Day Soccer, Swope Park and World Cup in Kansas City?

TGIF! Here is all the Sporting Kansas City (and soccer news) you may have missed.

Kansas City:

• Sporting KC v San Jose Earthquakes: Preview, Predictions, Injuries & Starting XI — Remember the last time we had a St. Patrick’s Day game? Fun times. But our own Chad Smith got it right when he said it’ll be hard to live up to last week’s game. Check out this week’s match preview.
• Salloi Called Up to Hungarian U21 Team — Daniel Salloi will miss next week’s match-up in Colorado to play as the Hungarians battle to qualify for the 2019 UEFA Under-21 Championships in Italy.

• Kansas City named to final list of Candidate Host Cities in 2026 FIFA World Cup bid — KC is one of 23 cities on the final list for Canada, the US, and Mexico’s bid to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
• Former Kansas City Comets player Vahid Assapour called up to the Canadian National Arena Soccer team.

Around the soccer world:

• US to host Bolivia in Memorial Day friendly at Talen Energy Stadium — Before heading to Europe, the USMNT will take on Bolivia in Philadelphia.
• Toronto FC to face Club America, Red Bulls take on Chivas in CCL semifinals — The next round of CCL play kicks off the first week of April.
• And in case you missed this. LAFC beat the Late Late Show FC only slightly worse than their game against RSL.

Got some time? Check out these longer reads:

• From Jamaica to USL to DC, Dane Kelly finally gets his MLS shot — Former Swope Park Rangers forward Dane Kelly got a nice writeup this week as he signed with D.C. United.
• How midtable became MLS no man’s land — Interesting perspective on how to judge success in MLS when the seasons are so long and one game can change everything.

That’s it for this Friday — enjoy your weekend, and if we don’t see you out at Sporting Park tomorrow, hopefully we’ll see you in the Twitterverse. Also, the Swope Park Rangers start the USL season tomorrow against Reno 1868.