02-04-2025
Why Peter Vermes The GM Got Peter Vermes The Manager Fired
Sporting Kansas City fired Peter Vermes, one of the longest-tenured managers in world football, on ... More Monday. His departure brings into question whether it's still possible to be an effective MLS GM and manager at the same time.
In the final days of the Peter Vermes era, when Sporting Kansas City's club-worst winless run had grown to double digits, one of the most consistently repated narratives among frustrated fans was of outdated tactics. It was even cited in a letter from the club's most visible supporters groups published on Sunday night, calling for the manager's resignation. (His dismissal followed on Monday.)
A closer examination of Vermes' recent managerial record suggests something different altogether.
While Vermes' Sporting Kansas City sides finished 12th, 8th and 13th in the Western Conference the last three seasons, what's more interesting is how poorly they played over their first 10 league games since 2022.
Across those 36 matches (10 from the past three seasons, plus six in 2025), Vermes' teams held a painful 4W-21L-11D record. They were much better than that – though far from excellent – over the remainder of each campaign.
In other words, Vermes got his group to improve from their starting point in each of the last three complete seasons, arguably the definitive sign of good coaching. But the starting point was simply a team less talented than most of its opponents – the sign of a bad personnel department. And until the middle of 2024, when Mike Burns was finally hired to assume the sporting director role, Vermes ran both sides.
While managers who doubled as sporting directors were once commonplace in the English game and elsewhere, it has always been the exception to the rule in MLS, reserved for managers who prove exceptionally accomplished as coaches and talent evaluators. With Vermes now out at Kansas City, there only two who currently occupy that dual role: San Jose Earthquakes boss Bruce Arena, and Chicago Fire gaffer Gregg Berhalter.
Arena tops the MLS all-time wins list and has an MLS-best five MLS Cup titles to his name. Berhalter was considered a borderline miracle worker on a budget during his time at the Columbus Crew. Both have coached the U.S. men's national team. Even so, that duo has combined for exactly one major trophy since the end of 2014, when Arena's New England Revolution won the 2021 Supporters' Shield.
There are some other extenuating facotrs – namely, the timeline of both men's service to the USMNT – but clearly doing both jobs has become harder than it used to be. And it clearly got a lot harder for Vermes, whose best years also came earlier in his tenure, when he won the 2013 MLS Cup, and the 2012, 2015 and 2017 U.S. Open Cups.
A major driving force in this has been the growth in the number of avenues MLS clubs can use to stock their rosters. The league debuted Targeted Allocation Money as a way for teams to buy down some salaries in terms of the salary cap in 2015, and General Allocation Money not long after. Then came the league's U-22 Intiative, introduced in 2021. All of these opened additional player markets for MLS clubs around the world, and as such favored clubs with stronger and more robust scouting and talent evaluation arms, and to some extent deeper purse strings.
In 2010, Vermes' network of European connections was ahead of its time. By 2023, it probably below league average. And he was also building his teams with one of the more limited budgets in the league, which gave him less margin for error on the big splashes he could make. And that may have sealed his fate.
Alan Pulido was a good MLS forward and did a lot of unsung work that made others around him better. But he was plauged by injury, and still not enough of a goal threat when healthy to justify his price tag. Similarly, the decision to reward Daniel Salloi for his extended service to the club by retaining him on a Designated Player contract also has not resulted in DP-level production.
Some clubs could afford two miscalulations of that nature. Sporting couldn't.
Vermes the manager clearly deserves another MLS job if he wants one. There's also no reason to suspect he couldn't be an effective sporting director if he was orchestrating a personnel department with a solid foundation, and devoting his sole attention to it.
But the days of doing both jobs should be over for Vermes, and maybe for everyone.
