Sporting Kansas City Versus Minnesota United Cancelled

Due to multiple positive COVID-19 tests for Minnesota United, their schedule game against Sporting Kansas City on Sunday, November 1st has been cancelled. Minnesota were set to travel to KC to play in Children’s Mercy Park but that won’t happen.

There will also be no chance to make up this game as Minnesota already have a midweek game against the Chicago Fire set for Wednesday. That will mean that Sporting KC will not see the field again until Decision Day against rival Real Salt Lake. That’s an 11 day gap between the FC Cincinnati game and the season finale.

Also, it will leave Sporting playing two less games than most of the league as one of their games against the Colorado Rapids was also cancelled (twice).

SKC, due to no fault of their own, have now lost the ability to play a road game (Colorado) and a home game (Minnesota) off their schedule. Their final game is on the road in Utah.

Since the season is so compressed, Major League Soccer (MLS) announced this week that the rules to qualify for the playoffs would be altered. Instead of going by total points, the first deciding factor is point per game, since teams like Colorado have played far less games than most of the rest of the league.

Currently SKC are the league’s fourth best team on PPG (1.80) behind only the Seattle Sounders (1.84), Toronto FC (1.95) and the Philadelphia Union (2.1). This will ensure Sporting host a home playoff game as they will have little opportunity to hurt their standings with just a game to go.

If Sporting win against RSL, via some quick back of the napkin math by our own Mike Kuhn, Sporting’s PPG max is now 1.86. For the Portland Timbers to pass them, they would need to win all three of their games over the next week.

We’ll have more on this story as it continues to unfold.