Sporting KC goalkeeper Eric Kronberg finally gets off the sidelines

Sporting Kansas City’s fortunes went from bad to worse on a cloudy evening in Los Angeles on May 14, 2011.

In the midst of a withering 10-game road trip, Sporting trailed the L.A. Galaxy 3-1. Late in the game, international soccer star David Beckham stood patiently to the left of Sporting’s goal, sizing up his prospects for an upcoming free kick.

Beckham was 23 yards from the goal — a distance from which most players wouldn’t attempt to score. But this was Beckham, who made his name by defying physics, arching and curving free kicks into opposing teams’ goals from absurd angles.

Beckham stepped up, plowed his right foot into the ball and sent it screaming past a wall of Sporting defenders — including goalkeeper Eric Kronberg — into the net to make the score 4-1.

Kronberg was making his second career start in a Major League Soccer match that night, despite having been with the franchise since 2006. His friends still joke about the time he got smoked by a distant Beckham free kick.

“It was a hell of a shot,” Kronberg tells The Pitch. “You know, there’s plenty of other goalkeepers who can say they’ve been scored on by David Beckham.”

There aren’t any Sporting players who can say they’ve been with the franchise as long as Kronberg has. Only a handful of MLS players can say they’ve been with the same team since ’06.

That year, the then–Kansas City Wizards selected Kronberg in the fourth round of the MLS draft. Lamar Hunt still owned the club, which played its home games in front of thousands of empty seats at Arrowhead Stadium.

Back then, the Wizards registered barely a blip on Kansas City’s sports radar. The club had a small but dedicated group of fans but lurked in the shadows of the Chiefs and Royals as well as area college teams. In those days, the Wizards struggled to make the MLS playoffs.

Things are far different now. Rechristened Sporting Kansas City, the team has new, well-heeled owners and plays in regularly sold-out Sporting Park in western Wyandotte County. The franchise is coming off a 2013 championship that has given it near-equal stature with the Chiefs and the Royals.

Through different owners, coaches, stadiums, lineups and fans, Kronberg has been the one constant. He has lived more KC soccer history in the last eight years than anyone, though from the sidelines.

The tall, lanky, amiable Californian has started just four regular-season games in his career. Dedicated Sporting fans have seen Kronberg log playing time in less significant U.S. Open Cup play. But to casual fans, the longest tenured member of Sporting is also one of the most anonymous members of the roster.

That figures to change this season. Kronberg enters the 2014 season as Sporting’s starting goalkeeper, taking the reins from the retiring Jimmy Nielsen.

“It’s a great opportunity for Eric because, as I’ve said in the past, he’s paid his dues,” says Sporting manager Peter Vermes. “He has all the ability and all the talent.”

The 30-year-old Kronberg is untested, yet he joins a mostly intact championship lineup that returns March 8. The biggest change: the departure of Nielsen, who has been Sporting’s starting goalkeeper since 2010 and team captain.

“Jimmy obviously was an extremely important player within our team,” Vermes says. “Not just his play on the field but also his leadership in the locker room. That’s something that is going to have to be dealt with by a few guys.”

Sticking around in Kansas City wasn’t always a sure thing for Kronberg. His contract expired after last season, and it wasn’t clear that Nielsen would retire. But two days after Sporting captured the cup, Nielsen hung up his cleats.

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Then, on December 16, Sporting traded for Columbus Crew goalkeeper Andy Gruenebaum while Kronberg was still hashing over whether to sign a new contract with Sporting or look elsewhere.

Gruenebaum, a Blue Valley North graduate, was a highly regarded MLS goalkeeper in 2012. Injuries limited his play in 2013, but he still came to Sporting as an established, experienced goalkeeper.

About two weeks later, Sporting and Kronberg reached a new deal. Not long after, the club announced that the starting job was his to lose.

“My main goal was to play,” Kronberg says. “Before Jimmy retired, there wasn’t a whole lot of talk about him retiring. There was some talk, but I wasn’t exactly sure. Once he announced that … that’s when I really focused on Kansas City and playing.”

Vermes says he’s pleased with Kronberg’s preseason play, praising the goalkeeper’s distribution, meaning Kronberg’s ability to get control of the ball and send it upfield to resume play. Goalkeepers are often seen as a last line of defense for a soccer team but can be effective as a first peg in an offensive system.

However, Kronberg has little margin for error with Gruenebaum waiting in the wings.

“I think he [Kronberg] will have a shorter leash,” says Mike Kuhn, a longtime Sporting KC fan who follows the team on his blog, Down the Byline. “I don’t think it will be necessarily short. Vermes has proven himself as one of those guys who will stick with a player a little bit longer, especially in goal. It’s not an area I think you will want to make rash decisions.”

The bench isn’t a place Kronberg wants to return anytime soon.

“There’s frustrations being a backup goalkeeper, especially for so long,” Kronberg says from training camp in Orlando, Florida. “I’m a competitor and want to play as much as possible.”

Kronberg grew up in Santa Rosa, California, the seat of Northern California’s famed wine country.

Like plenty of American youngsters, Kronberg took up soccer at a young age. Like fewer American kids, Kronberg stuck with the sport. Even as a teenager, he sometimes took the backup-goalkeeper position but also got playing time at forward.

By the time he went to college, Kronberg was firmly entrenched as a netminder. He spent two years at Fresno State before transferring to the University of California–Berkeley.

The Kansas City Wizards drafted Kronberg in 2006, a year in which the team started Bo Oshoniyi in net. With little prospect of playing for the Wizards as a rookie, Kronberg was sent to Miami to gain seasoning with a minor league team.

By the time Kronberg returned to Kansas City in 2007, the Wizards had jettisoned Oshoniyi. But the team didn’t see Kronberg as its starting goaltender. The franchise signed veteran MLS goalkeeper Kevin Hartman, who held the spot until 2010.

Meanwhile, Kronberg didn’t make an appearance in MLS play. He missed all of 2009 following surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff.

The Wizards opted to bring in a new goalkeeper rather than promote from within in 2010, signing Nielsen from a professional club in Denmark, despite not knowing much about him.

Nielsen played well enough to keep the starting job that season, although the Wizards missed the playoffs. It would be the last season that the club would play in the outfield of CommunityAmerica Ballpark.

Kronberg made his first career MLS start in the final game of that season, a home game against the San Jose Earthquakes that closed out a forgettable era of soccer played in a baseball stadium.

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Earlier that year, Kronberg did play the second half of the Wizards’ exhibition match against English squad Manchester United, which brought 52,000 fans to Arrowhead on July 25, 2010.

That game is now considered a turning point in franchise history, a showcase that made people pay attention to the local soccer club. And despite playing against mostly backup players, the Wizards won 2-1 over the famed Red Devils, helping unite the locker room.

“It was a confidence-builder, for sure,” Kronberg says. “They’re obviously one of the best teams in the world. To beat them at Arrowhead is definitely something I’ll be telling my grandchildren when I’m old and gray.”

Another turning point in Kronberg’s eyes was a scoreless match in Toronto the following year. By then, the Wizards were renamed Sporting Kansas City, but the club couldn’t play home games at Sporting Park at the beginning of the season due to stadium construction. Sporting opened the season with an arduous 10-game stretch of road matches — the franchise was mired in last place for most of that time.

The final game of that string was against Toronto on June 4. Nielsen came down with an illness just before game time and had to sit out, which gave Kronberg his third career start. Kronberg beat away two scoring attempts by Toronto in the game, preserving a scoreless tie.

“The shutout in Toronto, even though it was a tie, it was a good result for us getting back on track,” Kronberg says.

The next game was the debut of Sporting Park. Gov. Sam Brownback was in attendance. So was Lance Armstrong, whose Livestrong charity was the stadium’s namesake at the time. So were more than 19,000 fans, the most to see an MLS game in Kansas City in years.

Kronberg watched the game from the sidelines until Nielsen was thrown out of the match in the second half for swatting a ball away outside the penalty box. It was a clear rule violation. Nielsen knew he would get thrown out before the referee showed him the red card. So did Kronberg, who took off his warm-up gear and prepared to go in before Nielsen left the field.

Kronberg’s chances have been few and far between since coming to Kansas City. But now, the opportunity is his.

“That absolutely has to be the big question, is whether Kronberg can step up and be the No. 1 guy,” Kuhn says.

Kronberg, who also recently married and bought a house in Parkville, says he’s up for the challenge.

“I feel very ready,” Kronberg says. “I think I’ve been ready for a while now. My coaches know it, and my teammates know it.”