KC 3-1 LAFC

By Anonymous (not verified), September 13, 2026

Sporting KC earns dominant 3-1 victory over LAFC

Record-signing Andre Luiz scores first for SKC;
Taylor Calheira continues fine form with goal;
Hometown product Jacob Bartlett seals win;
SKC back at home next Saturday to host Philadelphia

2026 MLS Regular Season | Game 24
Sporting Park | Kansas City, KS
Attendance: 15,738
Weather: 73 degrees and rainy

Score	1	2	F
Sporting Kansas City (5-16-3, 18 pts.)	2	1	3
LAFC (11-8-7, 40 pts.)	0	1	1

Sporting Kansas City: Stefan Cleveland; Justin Reynolds, Moises Mosquera, Wyatt Meyer, Emir Karic; Andre Luiz (Shapi Suleymanov 85’), Lasse Berg Johnsen (C), Kwaku Agyabeng (Jacob Bartlett 61’), Calvin Harris (Jayden Reid 87’); Taylor Calheira, Stephen Afrifa (Seymour Reid 85’)

Subs Not Used: John Pulskamp, Diego Borges, Alex Cunningham, Jansen Miller, Ruben Ramos Jr.

LAFC: Hugo Lloris (C); Sergi Palencia (Ryan Hollingshead 67’), Eddie Segura, Nkosi Tafari, Yevhen Cheberko (Jeremy Ebobisse 81’); Igor Jesus (Marky Delgado 46’), Jude Terry (Jacob Shaffelburg 46’), Mathieu Choiniere; Armindo Sieb (Tyler Boyd 67’), Son Heung-Min, Denis Bouanga

Subs Not Used: Cabral Carter, Aaron Long, Kenneth Nielsen, Ryan Raposo

Scoring Summary:
SKC – Andre Luiz 1 (Justin Reynolds 2, Moises Mosquera 1) 18’
SKC – Taylor Calheira 3 (Unassisted) 31’
LAFC – Denis Bouanga 13 (Jacob Shaffelburg 4, Son Heung-Min 12) 48’
SKC – Jacob Bartlett 2 (Unassisted) 71’

Misconduct Summary:
LAFC – Sergi Palencia (Yellow Card; Unsporting Behavior) 19’
SKC – Kwaku Agyabeng (Yellow Card; Unsporting Behavior) 44’
LAFC – Yevhen Cheberko (Yellow Card; Unsporting Behavior) 80’
SKC – Calvin Harris (Yellow Card; Unsporting Behavior) 82’

STAT	SKC	LAFC
Shots	19	20
Shots on Goal	8	8
Expected Goals	2.3	2.7
Corner Kicks	6	13
Possession	47.9%	52.1%
Saves	7	5
Fouls	6	9

Referee: Chris Penso
Assistant Referee: Logan Brown
Assistant Referee: Eduardo Jeff
Fourth Official: Atahan Yaya
VAR: Elijio Arreguin
AVAR: Jonathan Johnson

(Sept. 12, 2026) – Sporting Kansas City (5-16-3, 18 pts.) produced a dominant performance to defeat LAFC (11-8-7, 40 pts.) 3-1 at Sporting Park on Saturday night. Record-signing Andre Luiz scored a brilliant opener before Taylor Calheira doubled the lead before halftime. After LAFC pulled a goal back early in the second half, Jacob Bartlett buried a third to seal the win.

Head coach Raphael Wicky was forced into a pair of changes to the starting lineup from last week’s 4-3 setback against FC Dallas as Wyatt Meyer and Calvin Harris were restored in place of the injured Or Blorian and Capita Capemba.

Following a back and forth start, Sporting’s record signing Andre sent the home crowd into raptures with a brilliant first goal for the club in the 18^th minute. Moises Mosquera picked out Justin Reynolds down the right wing who in turn fed Andre inside the penalty area and the Brazilian showed his quality by cutting inside onto his left foot, eliminating former teammate Igor Jesus in the process, and rifling home a strike off the underside of the crossbar.

Andre almost added a second four minutes later when he latched onto Emir Karic’s pin-point pass but saw his volleyed effort from the edge of the area deflected narrowly wide.

Sporting continued to push forward and made their first-half dominance count with a second goal in the 31^st minute through Calheira. A week after scoring his first two goals for the club in Dallas, Calheira reacted fastest when Stephen Afrifa’s looping back-post header came off the post and diverted the ball into the back of the net for his third goal of the season.

Afrifa almost got in on the act in the 39^th minute when he pounced on a turnover in LAFC’s half and sent a rasping half-volley toward goal that Hugo Lloris beat away while diving to his right.

LAFC almost found a response in the 43^rd minute when star forward Denis Bouanga wriggled free on the edge of the Sporting area but his low drive was expertly saved by Stefan Cleveland down low to his right. Son Heung-Min then tested Cleveland from distance with a free kick in first-half stoppage time but the Sporting ‘keeper was again equal to the attempt.

LAFC came out flying to start the second half and reduced the deficit in the 48^th minute when Bouanga tucked home from halftime substitute Jacob Shaffelburg’s low cross. The visitors continued pouring forward and almost equalized when the ball squirmed through to Marky Delgado through on goal but Cleveland produced a brilliant save with his left boot to keep Sporting ahead.

At the other end, Calheira almost added to his tally for the night but saw his low drive from 12 yards excellently saved by Lloris in the LAFC net. In the 69^th minute, Calheira sent Afrifa scampering toward goal but the Canadian forward skewed his effort wide under pressure.

Seconds later, Bouanga pounced on a mistake in the Sporting half to feed Mathieu Choiniere whose strike from distance was again repelled by Cleveland at full stretch.

Sporting restored the team’s two-goal cushion in the 71^st minute through a composed strike from Homegrown product Bartlett. Ten minutes after coming into the game as a substitute, the Overland Park native settled the ball after Andre’s shot was deflected to the edge of the area and stroked a lovely finish into the bottom corner for his second of the season to make the score 3-1 and seal Sporting’s first win over LAFC since 2021.

Sporting is back at home next weekend when the team hosts Eastern Conference side the Philadelphia at Sporting Park 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. Tickets are available via SeatGeek.

QUOTES

Sporting Kansas City head coach Raphael Wicky

On the game…

I'm obviously very proud of the performance and proud of the team. Against a very good LAFC team, to bring a performance to the field in front of our crowd is really nice. I'm very pleased and very happy about that. We played a very good first half in all phases of the game, defending and attacking. Rarely a game for 90 minutes goes (perfect), right? We would wish that the second half continues like (the first), but that's football. They change something and then we had to adjust and we struggled in the beginning with adjusting. I think LAFC came out very strong in the second half and played well, but we fought together through that. That's also part of a team. We fought. We have to fight. We have to suffer in moments like that and then when we were able to stabilize everything, we were able to then react again and create a few more chances. In the second half, we obviously also had Stefan (Cleveland) making a few saves, but that's also part of football. We need that. That's why we have goalkeepers who help the team as well. I’m very pleased with the performance. What I like the most is that we played our game. With the ball in the first half, we played our game. It doesn't matter what they do. I think we had already in Dallas a very good performance in possession with the ball, where we created a lot of chances. And that's what we told the team. Let's be us. Let's play us. Whatever the opposition does, they reacted very well to that. I'm proud of that. That's a great win. I'm happy for all the fans who didn't see enough wins this year. That's a great win. And for us, the preparation for the next game already starts but I hope everyone can enjoy this evening and then we just have to keep going game by game.

On the plan and execution…

They executed really well. The plan is that you have a good rest defense, that you are anticipating that if you're not anymore attacking, that you're becoming the first defender, the first defending-thinking player. Our back line with Moises (Mosquera), Wyatt (Meyer), Emir (Karic), with Justin (Reynolds) at times who was a bit higher and wider, and with the two sixes, Kwaku (Agyabeng) and Lasse (Berg Johnsen) did a great job of organizing rest defense. We had a few good counter-press moments as well. So it's that, but every team knows that. Every team tries to do that and they still hurt you a lot. But tonight, I think we executed really well as a team and the guys were concentrated and focused a large number of times when we had the ball because they're very dangerous when we have the ball. That's how they score a lot of goals.

On Andre Luiz…

That's why we bought him, right? That's why he's here. He's a very good player. From the first moment he trained with us, you could see his individual quality, his change of pace, his 1v1, and obviously what he showed today he showed from the first day. Now, teams will analyze him, teams will put two players against him. It's going to be very important that we don't just give him the ball and watch and hope that he's going to dribble three guys, because that's not going to happen. We will still need to support him, have overlapping runs, underlapping runs, so that he can make it hard for the other team as well. On top of that, he's a good guy. He has integrated very quickly in the team. He's a person who enjoys, who smiles and laughs a lot, so I'm very happy with him that he lasted almost 80 minutes tonight. We're still trying to bring him to a 90-minute game fit. He hasn't played in a long time and we're still working on that.

On the standings…

When we come into the training facility, there are a lot of TVs around, and the standing is on every TV, every day, all day. That's enough. We don't need to talk. I see the standing every day and it hurts every day. It hurts every player every day and it hurts every staff member every day. We try to take it game by game. The next most important game is next Saturday, and we're going to prepare and we're going to try to bring our best version again against Philly and try to be us against Philly. With that, we’ll hopefully have chances to have a good performance and with a good performance, have the chance to win games. That's what we're focusing on and I have felt for a long time that we're close. We're closer than we were in March or April, way closer. We were in games. We were competitive in a lot of games. Things didn't really turn our way and we just have to keep working hard and believing in what we do so that we can actually not only win one game so that we can turn these games around and get more wins. Then we will see what happens.

On Jacob Bartlett coming off the bench…

It was a one for one sub. Kwaku (Agyabeng) had a yellow card. I didn't want to sub him at half-time. It's always a bit of gamble, but the player also has to learn. He's an unexperienced player who has to learn to play in this position with a yellow card. Otherwise I have to sub every player out who receives a yellow card. After the start of the second half, we felt that we needed fresh legs and we know what Bartlett can give us. He came in really, really well. Not only because of his goal, but he was very disciplined in his positioning. That's something he we always talk about that he wants to improve and he has to improve The goal is obviously really nice. I'm really happy for him. It's a beautiful goal. He was very calm. It obviously helped us a lot.

On Stephen Afrifa’s performance…

Stephen has done well. He was very dangerous in Dallas as well last weekend and he has been really good today as well. He works hard. I'm happy for every player who uses his opportunities and who shows, ‘I'm there and he can count on me.’ I think right now he's in a very good flow. He needs to keep working hard like everyone else, even after a win, and then confirm the next weekend. But I'm very happy for him that he actually gets minutes and can show some of his talents.

On Taylor Calheira scoring again…

I think he gets rewarded for his hard work. Taylor is working so hard for our team against the ball, but also in possession. He tries to battle with the center backs and hold up the ball. And he gets rewarded for it. He had really good games before the break and also after his injury, but he didn't get rewarded. He was in position, but then there was something missing. Right now, he's getting rewarded. The ball falls in front of his feet and he can score. That's where you have to be as a 9 and I'm happy for him that he actually works hard and gets a reward with goals because in the end of the day, you're a 9 and you want to score goals.

On the team’s first game without Or Blorian…

That is something which obviously goes way beyond a football game and it's way more important. I think it puts everything a little bit in perspective. He was there (in the locker room) and I just told him that we're just all really happy that he's here with us, because it was tight and people saved his life. So we're just very happy that he's here and that he knows that every player, every staff member, the whole club, everyone from this club will support him and will be there for him because it is more important than a game. That's what we told him. That's what I think about. I'm not a doctor. I cannot go into details, but there are things which are more important than the soccer ball.

Sporting Kansas City midfielder Jacob Bartlett

On his goal…

Coming off the bench, it's definitely different than starting but for me I try to approach it the same. I go into the game thinking to myself I'm going to go in the game and I have got to affect it positively hopefully. The ball kind of favorably bounced to me and Andre attracted a lot of defenders for me so he gave me a chance to score. I'm just grateful to be able to do it.

On the significance of the win…

Obviously, I've been in this club pretty much half my life. It pretty much means everything to me to be able to score and to impact the team and help the team get back to where it used to be. It's the goal for everyone -- players coming in, players that have been here -- we know it's possible and we have the total belief that we're going to do it. I think you've seen pieces coming together. I think it's just a matter of time and hopefully we can go finish the season strong with as many points as possible.

On the key to slowing down LAFC in transition…

We talked about it all week. They have quality all over the field, especially up top. So when we're in their attacking third -- we call it rest defense -- having players accounted for, especially guys with so much speed and so much talent. You have to be able to know where they are at all times. I think our back line and midfield did a great job throughout the whole game. We were able to limit them with their chances.

On his development…

Obviously I can always learn and it's great info to take in and kind of process and try to go deliver on the weekends. I feel like I do have a lot of energy. I try to and I definitely need to harness it a little bit better and they're helping me do that. Having the partnership with Lasse (Berg Johnsen), he's a great player. He's experienced. He’s played in big games so having that connection with him just makes my job pretty easy.

On his mindset prior to the goal…

Obviously the touch sets up everything so obviously in my head, I just want to take a good touch to set myself up as best I could. I just happened to be in the right spot at the right time.