Friday, May 17, 2013

Kamara and Saad Called Up for National Team Duty

Sporting KC have two more internationals for the upcoming international window.  Joining Matt Besler and Graham Zusi on national team duty will be Kei Kamara and Soony Saad. 

Kamara will be rejoining the Sierra Leone national team for their 2 upcoming qualifiers for the 2014 World Cup.  Currently Sierra Leone sit in 2nd place in their 4 team qualifying group on 4 points with a 1-1-1 record at the half way point.  The first game is on June 8th when Kamara and Sierra Leone will host group leaders, Tunisia.  Tunisia is currently on 9 points, so a loss by Sierra Leone would see them eliminated from qualification and almost assure Tunisia passage to the next round.  The second match sees the Leone Stars travel to Cape Verde, who are currently winless in this round of qualifying, but the African Cup of Nations quarter-finalists will be a tough opponent for Sierra Leone.  During the stretch, Kamara will not miss any league games as he'll not leave until after KC's game against Montreal on the first and return before KC's match in Dallas on the 22nd.  He would miss a potential US Open Cup game should KC win their first match.

Saad is a new addition to the list of Sporting KC internationals.  After representing the US at the U17 and U20 level, Saad has filed his one time switch with FIFA to represent Lebanon. Saad will be gone from May 25th through the 31st for a friendly against Oman.  Saad will miss Sporting KC's match up against Houston on the 26th as well as KC's first US Open Cup game.  The later of those two games is probably the bigger blow for KC because Saad was likely to be a starter for that game for KC. 

Good luck to both players as they represent their country.

1 comment:

Nathan Martin said...

Obviously this is 100% Saad's right to choose, however, because of travel considerations, the likelihood of resigning with SKC is even further diminished.

The internet says its a 13.5 hour flight from KC to Beirut. Aside from his dreams of playing in Europe, he's going to want to live in Europe so that the travel time is closer to 4 hours or less.

I'd like him to earn enough playing time to put him in the transfer shopping window, that is if he is under contract after this year.