How to Watch: Sporting KC vs. Phoenix Rising Preseason Game

Preseason is well underway for Sporting Kansas City who will return to action this Saturday to face Phoenix Rising FC of the USL Championship. Phoenix have hosted Sporting KC for the last several preseasons and made their facilities available to the club. As a part of that hosting experience, the teams routinely face off with one another.

SKC are surprisingly not perfect against their second division foes, going 3-1 (not counting games against trialists) since they started facing off in the preseason.

• 2018: Sporting win 2-1 on Salloi and Ilie goals
• 2019: KC win 3-2 on aggregate in 150 minutes of soccer
• 2020: SKC Lose 2-1 in Phoenix
• 2021: Sporting KC win 4-0, with three Wilson Harris goals

I had forgot about those preseason goals from Harris. Maybe this is why I was clinging to “play him with the starters” all season. He did here, and scored left and right (not to mention prolifically in USL). And basically he never played in a true 4-3-3 with these guys, all season, and is gone in 2022.

How to Watch: Live Stream on SportingKC.com/Live*

Date: Saturday, February 12th

Time: 5:30 PM CST (4:30 PM MST)

Where: Phoenix Rising Soccer Complex - Chandler, AZ

*According to the team, league rules prohibit the stream from being accessible outside of Kansas and Missouri (excluding St. Louis — meaning they can’t watch). So if you don’t live in KS or MO, or your in St. Louis, you won’t be able to watch. However, there are services like VPNs out there, that let you “be” where you need to be to see something. If you are out of market, I’d recommend figuring that out before Saturday.

Phoenix Rising initially listed this game as closed door, so it’s unclear if they will host another stream or start ticket sales. Their preseason tickets are currently just on sale for the following weekend against Louisville.

A Preseason Cancellation

Sporting KC were originally set to face off with the El Paso Locomotive (also of the USL Championship) on Wednesday, February 9th, but that game was cancelled this week. I find this personally especially disappointing as I was flying in the day before.

Remainder of Preseason Schedule

• Saturday, February 12th @ 5:30 PM CST — Phoenix Rising FC — Phoenix, AZ
• Saturday, February 19th @ 3:00 PM CST — Toronto FC — Austin, TX

Here is the full schedule and roster of players initially invited to camp. The team did swap out some of the SKC Academy players as they’ve recently added midfielder Jayvin Van Deventer and GK Matthew Hudson (sending home Ryan Reid and Coby Jones). Both 2022 SuperDraft picks also returned home, with Esai Easley picking up an ankle injury during preseason, though he’s on the SKC II preseason roster. Jahon Rad has returned to KC as well.

In addition, the new international signings Robert Voloder and Logan Ndenbe are now all listed as present in Arizona and they played this past weekend. Cypriot forward Marinos Tzionis is set to arrive soon. Additionally, new SKC II signing Rauf Salifu is in camp with the first team. I’ll be interested to see if he gets time at striker instead of playing Ozzie Cisneros a bit out of position.

Saturday’s game will be the final preseason game in Arizona before the club moves operations to Austin, TX for a match with Toronto FC to close out the preaseason.