September 21, 2026 - 3 Games Today

Sporting KC Falls, 4-3, to Philadelphia Union

Published on September 19, 2026 under Major League Soccer (MLS)
Sporting Kansas City News Release

Sporting Kansas City (5-17-3, 18 pts.) fell to a 4-3 defeat against the Philadelphia Union (10-10-6, 36 pts.) at Sporting Park on Saturday night. Andre Luiz scored twice in the first half to go along with Wyatt Meyer's first goal for the club before red-hot Philadelphia responded with four second-half goals to take the points.

Head coach Raphael Wicky named an unchanged lineup for just the third time this season and the first time since the World Cup break following last week's 3-1 victory over LAFC, while midfielder Zorhan Bassong and new acquisition Owen Wolff were available off the bench after returning from injury.

Sporting got off to a roaring start when Andre produced one of the best individual goals of the season to give the hosts the lead in the sixth minute. Receiving a ball from Lasse Berg Johnsen on the halfway line, Andre spun away from Jovan Lukic before eliminating Nathan Harriel with some clever footwork and firing low into the bottom corner for his second goal in as many games.

Not satisfied, Andre added his third goal for the club four minutes and 35 seconds after his first of the night. Calvin Harris drove forward down the left wing before sending the ball across to Andre who curled a sumptuous finish into the bottom corner from 20 yards to make it 2-0.

Andre almost had a hat trick within the first 15 minutes when he was sent through on goal by Stephen Afrifa, but his low shot to the near post was well tipped around the post for a corner by Andre Blake in the Philadelphia net.

It would matter little, as Meyer headed home from Emir Karic's ensuing corner kick to give Sporting a 3-0 lead in the 16th minute for his first goal for the club and first since May of 2025 in the U.S. Open Cup for Nashville SC.

With Sporting initially holding firm for the opening stages of the second half, the Union eventually broke the dam and scored four goals in the space of nine minutes to turn the game on its head. Bruno Damiani tallied in the 64th minute to pull a goal back before Cavan Sullivan added another two minutes later.

With the hosts reeling, Milan Iloski equalized for Philadelphia in the 68th minute and the comeback was complete in the 73rd minute when Zorhan Bassong inadvertently diverted the ball into his own net after Neil Pierre had knocked down a cross.

Sporting hits the road next weekend to take on longtime foes the Houston Dynamo at Shell Energy Stadium on Saturday night. Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m. CT and will be available to stream on Apple TV, while the game will be air on the radio on Sports Radio 810 WHB and La Grande 1340 AM.

QUOTES

Sporting Kansas City head coach Raphael Wicky Thoughts on the second half...

It has nothing to do with the change we did in halftime. We said in halftime that we're going to keep playing. We have to keep playing. We have to keep being brave like what we did in the first half to keep showing up and keep fighting. Obviously, we can not get carried away with emotions. I think the last 5-7 minutes of the first half, we had a few little fights on the field which are unnecessary in that moment in a 3-0 game. We said we have to keep our emotions, we have to keep the mentality and keep playing football. I feel like we stopped playing football for a while. We went straight into their game. We knew it's a very vertical game. They like the duels. We stopped wanting the ball. We stopped trying to make them run and trying to play. When we conceded the first goal, the team just crumbled. That is obviously unacceptable. That is not what we want. That is not what I expected, to be fair, after the last weeks. Now we're sitting here and I cannot believe what happened in the second half.

On what happened to the team in the second half...

If I would exactly know then we would try not to let it happen. In a moment where you are 3-0 up, they put a bit of pressure because they have nothing to lose. They pressure you maybe a bit harder and then maybe don't want the ball anymore. You lose a duel or two and then you lose a little bit of confidence. Then you think let's just boot the ball up front and maybe we're lucky and we get something. But that's exactly what they want. So I think it's a little bit, in certain moments, a confidence thing but also we have to show personality in the difficult moments. A game is not going to go like in first half where you always go (in the right direction). It's not going to continue like that so we've got to keep showing personality and trying to play together.

On the pressure to get results...

I want to win. I want to win games. I am obviously very disappointed sitting here and losing 4-3 at home after being 3-0 up. That's obviously not good enough to lose 4-0 in the second half and now we have to again analyze what happened in the second half and then we start to prepare a week again.

On the four goals from Philadelphia...

I don't think that Philadelphia did something different in the second half than in the first half. I think we did things different. I think we played less. I think we went too vertical and didn't want the ball anymore. We didn't give solutions anymore like we did in the first half in some very good moments. We knew that if we moved them side to side, on the other side quite often there is space. We did that well in the first half. We stopped doing it. You have to have the mentality for 90 minutes. There is battles for 90 minutes, because that is their game. They play very vertical. They live off second ball and third ball phases and I think, in that spell of 8-10 minutes, we lost ourselves.

On Philadelphia's first goal...

That's a collective thing, where we're not good. I think the first goal comes where the guy dribbles through three or four players of us where we have moments where we can and have to win challenges. And if you don't win these challenges, then it's becoming dangerous.

Sporting Kansas City midfielder Lasse Berg Johnsen

On the second half...

It's a team collective. We break down. We are a bottom team. We get affected by the first goal. Everybody can see it. We don't get out of that rhythm. They score two quick goals. I should do better on the third goal. I'm afraid to make a penalty. I let him in too soft and it's 3-3. We are anxious. I would hope to stay here and say that we have been in this situation before where we have been leading 2-0 or 3-0 before and we know how to wave the game out, but we didn't do that today. It's really disappointing. We need to learn from it because it cannot happen. At 3-0 in football, the game should be over. We played a good first half for nothing. It's really a waste and really disappointing. We cannot be sorry for ourselves. It's only we who did it. So I'm sorry to the fans that they have to sit through the second half watching that because that's nowhere near our standard or where we want to be and we know that.

On what changed in the second half...

I'm not sure how much they changed but they definitely did something. My feeling was that they just went straight at us with man-to-man midfielders on our sixes and when we go long they were four against four on the back line. We go a little bit longer. We don't get any clear chances from that. They play with more risk going man-to-man and they feel confident getting one goal, two goals and three goals and we get on the back foot. For sure we could maybe do something else. We could try to press them at times and play more with the ball. We get afraid as a team. It's a situation we are in. We try to play the game and come out with a win and but we struggled when they scored two goals quick.

On the drop in confidence after conceding...

It's happened before, like you say, in Dallas. We've probably scored a lot of goals lately and we have only three points. We know when we score three goals, it should be a win or at least one point. Today, again, we come out with zero points so we are not good at managing those situations at the moment. I think it's a part of the situation we've been in. As a team, we are fighting in the bottom. If you're higher up the table, you have more confidence in those situations. We have to learn from them and try to play better next time we are in the lead because this shouldn't happen.

On the leadership on the field...

We need to talk to each other and look at each other and agree on if we are going to press them for the next minutes or are we going to keep playing or are we going to go longer and go for the second balls. Today, as a team, I didn't think we managed it well enough in those situations. We need to look at it and see how can we solve it better on the pitch because in those moments what usually happens is we players can be silent so we need to talk to each other to make sure we are on the same save wavelength. If we either go longer or if we try to play or if we press them or if we sit, today we didn't manage that good enough.

Sporting Kansas City is owned by Sporting Club, an entity comprised of local business and community leaders. Sporting prides itself on a commitment and vision to provide high-performance experiences. Sporting Club purchased the team from the Hunt Sports Group in 2006, and under its direction has launched Swope Soccer Village, Sporting Park, Compass Minerals Sporting Fields, Compass Minerals National Performance Center and Central Bank Sporting Complex while investing in the Sporting KC Academy and Sporting Kansas City II for developing local youth into homegrown talent. A charter member of Major League Soccer, Sporting are two-time MLS Cup champions (2000, 2013) and four-time winners of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup (2004, 2012, 2015, 2017).

2026 MLS Regular Season | Game 25

Sporting Park | Kansas City, KS

Attendance: 14,534

Weather: 85 degrees and clear

Download: Full match highlights

Download: Raphael Wicky postgame

Score 1 2 F

Sporting Kansas City (5-17-3, 18 pts.) 3 0 3

Philadelphia Union (10-10-6, 36 pts.) 0 4 4

Sporting Kansas City: Stefan Cleveland; Justin Reynolds, Moises Mosquera, Wyatt Meyer, Emir Karic; Andre Luiz, Lasse Berg Johnsen (C) (Zorhan Bassong 71'), Kwaku Agyabeng (Jacob Bartlett 46'), Calvin Harris (Ruben Ramos Jr. 82'); Taylor Calheira (Seymour Reid 67'), Stephen Afrifa (Owen Wolff 70')

Subs Not Used: John Pulskamp, Diego Borges, Jansen Miller, Jayden Reid

Philadelphia Union: Andre Blake (C); Frankie Westfield, Neil Pierre, Nathan Harriel, Kai Wagner; Cavan Sullivan (Alejandro Bedoya 82'), Danley Jean Jacques, Jovan Lukic (Jesus Bueno 82'), Indiana Vassilev (Quinn Sullivan 46'); Milan Iloski (Ezekiel Alladoh 82'), Bruno Damiani (Agustin Anello 89')

Subs Not Used: George Marks, Japhet Sery Larsen, Ben Bender, Malik Jakupovic

Scoring Summary:

SKC - Andre Luiz 2 (Lasse Berg Johnsen 5) 6'

SKC - Andre Luiz 3 (Calvin Harris 6) 10'

SKC - Wyatt Meyer 1 (Emir Karic 2) 16'

PHI - Bruno Damiani 8 (Frankie Westfield 9, Cavan Sullivan 12) 64'

PHI - Cavan Sullivan 7 (Danley Jean Jacques 3, Quinn Sullivan 5) 66'

PHI - Milan Iloski 13 (Danley Jean Jacques 4) 68'

PHI - Own Goal (Zorhan Bassong) 73'

Misconduct Summary:

SKC - Kwaku Agyabeng (Yellow Card; Unsporting Behavior) 45'

PHI - Jesus Bueno (Yellow Card; Unsporting Behavior) 52+

SKC - Lasse Berg Johnsen (Yellow Card; Unsporting Behavior) 53'

PHI - Cavan Sullivan (Yellow Card; Unsporting Behavior) 70'

PHI - Kai Wagner (Yellow Card; Persistent Infringement) 79'

PHI - Danley Jean Jacques (Yellow Card; Unsporting Behavior) 96+

SKC - Zorhan Bassong (Yellow Card; Unsporting Behavior) 97+

STAT SKC PHI

Shots 10 11

Shots on Goal 5 7

Expected Goals 1.4 2.3

Corner Kicks 3 4

Possession 47.6% 52.4%

Saves 4 2

Fouls 11 13

Referee: Katja Koroleva

Assistant Referee: Kathryn Nesbitt

Assistant Referee: Jason White

Fourth Official: Malik Badawi

VAR: Edvin Jurisevic

AVAR: Fabio Tovar

(Sept. 19, 2026) - Sporting Kansas City (5-17-3, 18 pts.) fell to a 4-3 defeat against the Philadelphia Union (10-10-6, 36 pts.) at Sporting Park on Saturday night. Andre Luiz scored twice in the first half to go along with Wyatt Meyer's first goal for the club before red-hot Philadelphia responded with four second-half goals to take the points.