KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Roger Espinoza scored his first MLS goal since March 2015 and came up with a huge assist – but all he'll take away from this one is the mistake he made just seconds from the final whistle, costing his team precious points in the Western Conference playoff race.
Espinoza assisted on Dom Dwyer's 81st-minute goal on Friday night, giving Sporting Kansas City a 3-2 lead over last-place Houston after they blew an early 2-0 advantage. But Espinoza's foul on Boniek Garcia gave the Dynamo a dangerous restart late in stoppage time, and they capitalized with Raul Rodriguez's equalizer to salvage a 3-3 draw.
“There's no such thing as balance,” Espinoza told reporters afterward. “It doesn't make it right – just because I scored and had an assist, that I can make the foul and they tie the game. We weren't having a very good second half, but we had the lead with one minute left.
“The foul right there should never have been a foul. I should never have committed the foul, I should say.”
Manager Peter Vermes was visibly frustrated by the late goal and the dropped points.
“It's terrible,” he said during his postmatch news conference. “Three times, we had the lead in the game, and we gave up two points tonight. But we don't have anybody to blame except ourselves.”
Sporting dominated the early going, with Jacob Peterson's putback and Espinoza's strike from distance staking them to a 2-0 advantage after 26 minutes, but the Dynamo equalized behind goals from Mauro Manotas in the 30th minute and Alex in the 59th.
“I think we played like crap after the 2-1 goal all the way to the 2-2 goal, and then we woke up a little bit again,” said midfielder Benny Feilhaber, whose corner kick led to Dwyer's score. “The 2-1 goal was one of the easiest goals I've ever seen a team that's winning 2-0 at home give up. It was way too easy. After that, we followed that with 30 minutes of really bad soccer. So we deserved to get to 2-2 at that point.
“Then we woke up and just had barely enough time to get to 3-2. We weren't able to hold on with five minutes to go.”
Dwyer's 13th goal of the year restored hopes of a victory that would have lifted Sporting six points clear of the team behind them in the Western Conference standings, Portland, with five matches to play – but late mistakes at the other end did them in.
“The last [goal], it was terrible management of the game,” Vermes said. “We fouled the guy with his back to the field – for what? What was he going to do? We give up a set piece late in the game for no reason at all. It wasn't like they were going on a counterattack and we had to make a foul because we needed to make a tactical foul. There was nothing to do.
“We gave up a silly foul, and then we didn't do our job at the end in defending the play. You've got to be able to do that."
