When: Saturday, April 11 at 7:30 pm
Where: Sporting Park
How to Watch: Apple TV<\/p>\n
Last Result: Preview<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t long ago that we were celebrating Sporting Kansas City\u2019s first win<\/a> of 2026 at the Los Angeles Galaxy<\/a>, but in the two games since then Sporting KC<\/a> has back-to-back losses to the Colorado Rapids (4-1)<\/a> and Real Salt Lake (3-1)<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now, Rapha Wicky\u2019s side will host the San Jose Earthquakes<\/a>, the team that beat SKC by a 3-0 margin<\/a> in the season opener back in February.<\/p>\n The Earthquakes sit tied with the Vancouver Whitecaps<\/a> for second in the Western Conference and have only lost one game this season. In San Jose\u2019s 5W-1L-0D start to 2026, they have allowed just one goal, which came in the aforementioned loss. Weirdly, somehow, that is not the best GA mark in the league. (LAFC have allowed zero goals.)<\/p>\n Meanwhile, SKC have allowed 14 goals this season<\/a>, which is bottom-five. They also have the third-worst goal differential with a -8, one worse than the winless Philadelphia Union<\/a> (-7).<\/p>\n I\u2019ve never been a big, expected goals (xG) guy, but I\u2019d be remiss if I didn\u2019t also mention that the Earthquakes lead the league in that statistic with 16.68. And you guessed it, Sporting is dead last at 3.85.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s a lot of negativity to start off in this preview<\/a>. Let\u2019s talk some positives.<\/p>\n Dejan Joveljic is still that dude. He, unsurprisingly, leads the team with four goals this season. His latest tally came in the loss to Real Salt Lake<\/a>. Lasse Berg Johnsen has only played in three games since arriving in Kansas City and already has two assists and a goal to his name.<\/p>\n We also finally saw 21-year-old Brazilian center back Diego Borges<\/a> play his first minutes with the club in the second half of the match against Salt Lake, and Angolan winger Capita<\/a> has a chance to play<\/a> against San Jose after not traveling with the club last weekend.<\/p>\n With Borges and Capita, it\u2019s a lot of unknown at the moment. But it is refreshing to see some new faces that could make an impact if they settle in.<\/p>\n Add to that the return of Zorhan Bassong and the roster is at least resembling a full-strength squad.<\/p>\n It\u2019s going to be an uphill battle for SKC, but that\u2019s been the theme for this entire season. With San Jose\u2019s defense being hard to break down, it will be pivotal for the likes of Joveljic, Johnsen, Manu Garcia and Shapi Suleymanov to take advantage of limited opportunities. It\u2019s also imperative to continue to develop the back line and not allow the Earthquakes to create in the offensive third. At the time of this writing, it is not clear whether Timo Werner will be available, but even without him, SJ scored three on (10-man) San Diego FC.<\/p>\n Storyline-wise, the only things riding on this game for SKC are trying to get out from the bottom of the Western Conference and defending home turf. Getting the first home win of the season would give fans something to cheer for, and if it came against top opposition like the Earthquakes, the Richter scale in Kansas City would be off the charts.<\/p>\n My Prediction: SJ 2 \u2013 SKC 1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When: Saturday, April 11 at 7:30 pmWhere: Sporting ParkHow to Watch: Apple TV Last Result:SKC: 3-1 Loss at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[87443,87444,88,1084,90,89,87445,85701,43954],"class_list":{"0":"post-260135","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-2026-mls-match-previews","9":"tag-2026-mls-season","10":"tag-san-jose","11":"tag-san-jose-earthquakes","12":"tag-san-jose-headlines","13":"tag-san-jose-news","14":"tag-skc","15":"tag-sporting-kansas-city","16":"tag-sporting-kc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
SKC: 3-1 Loss at Real Salt Lake<\/a>
SJ: 3-0 Win vs San Diego FC<\/p>\n