KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Winning the possession battle, chasing the match on the scoreboard: It's been a familiar theme for Sporting Kansas City of late. Saturday night's 3-1 loss to Real Salt Lake fit the template perfectly.
Sporting held 59.5 percent of the possession and out-shot the visitors 15-6, including a 4-3 advantage in shots on target. A marking mistake and a bad deflection had them down 2-0 at the break, and another defensive lapse in the second half undid the momentum from Dom Dwyer's 50th-minute strike that had momentarily pulled them within a goal.
“It's a little bit weird,” said winger Brad Davis, who was charged with an own goal in first-half stoppage time when Yura Movsisyan's cross hit him in the back and deflected into the net. “I think we have been playing some really good stuff, I really do – at times for the majority of games. We're literally getting punished for every mistake, it feels like, that we're making right now.”
Sporting's first costly mistake, a giveaway by veteran center back Matt Besler, was followed quickly by another: leaving Juan Manuel “Burrito” Martinez unmarked for an easy tap-in of Joao Plata's cross in the 32nd minute.
Then just three minutes after the Dwyer goal that cut Kansas City's deficit in half, RSL capitalized on a Sporting giveaway with a pass out of midfield by Kyle Beckerman which sprung teammate Movsisyan on a long counter run that he finished off with a cool chip past SKC goalkeeper Tim Melia to widen RSL's lead to 3-1.
“It is hard to chase games when it is 1-0, 2-0, 2-1 and 3-1,” manager Peter Vermes said. “People talk about chances. It’s not about scoring goals; it is about giving away silly goals. We have given away too many silly goals. The players that are making those mistakes is a little bit hard to understand; it is just not normal.
“Whenever you make mistakes it is concerning. The fact that our more experienced guys are making mistakes becomes difficult, but we have to keep working to not make those mistakes.”
With their second loss to RSL in as many matches this season – both at Children's Mercy Park where RSL had been winless across all competitions in the stadium's first five seasons – Sporting now have just one victory in their last nine outings.
If there's a bright spot to that, Davis said, it's that adversity breeds determination – and there's still a lot of season left.
“Things aren't going well for us right now,” he said. “We all understand that. We all know that. But we still have to come back to work with a positive attitude, because these are times that you can really create a bond within a group. You go through the hard times, you go through the trenches, you go through the bad times. You're going to have low times throughout the year.
“But when it turns around, watch out – because this group's going to be extremely motivated. The group's going to be extremely tight. This group will continue to work hard – I know that for a fact – in training to turn things around.”
