KANSAS CITY, Kan.—Nine total shots, eight offside violations, and no goals until the fourth minute of second-half stoppage time.
Sporting Kansas City's offense struggled to get on track through most of Saturday night's 2-1 loss to Real Salt Lake – Sporting's first defeat of the season after victories in their first three matches.
Real deserved credit for breaking the home side's rhythm, manager Peter Vermes said in his postmatch news conference, but Vermes also criticized referee Ted Unkel for what he believed to be poor management of the visiting side's slowdown tactics.
Still, Vermes said, the ultimate responsibility lay with his club.
“I think what happens is that we knew going into this game that they were going to slow the game down,” he said, “We have to be able to do something to counter that and we didn’t do a good enough job on our end. We played at their tempo and we made it easy for them for the majority of the game.”
It also didn't help that Sporting fell behind 1-0 in the 29th minute on Justen Glad's first career MLS goal, a header off a set piece during which Sporting left three players unmarked on Joao Plata's free kick.
“By giving up the goal on the set piece, which was too simple of a goal, we put ourselves in a bad position,” said midfielder Benny Feilhaber, who scored on a late penalty kick in his first match of the season after missing the first three with an abdominal strain. “We had to play off the counterattack. They put a lot of men behind the ball and when you give up the lead, it allows them to do that even more so.
“I thought we had a pretty good response after the goal at the end of the first half, but it was pretty short. In the second half we started throwing more bodies in, but at the same time it wasn’t organized. It wasn’t as good as we needed to be.”
That showed most glaringly in the eight offside calls, though some appeared close on replay.
“I'll have to watch the game back and see, to be honest,” said center forward Dom Dwyer told reporters. “I'm sure it was very tight, as it always is. Sometimes they call it on. Sometimes they call it off.”
