By SKYLAR ROLSTAD
A controversial penalty call in the 84th minute resulting in a Benny Feilhaber penalty kick goal was all that could separate Sporting Kansas City from the Seattle Sounders as Sporting defeated the league-best Sounders, 1-0, on Saturday night at Sporting Park in Kansas City, Kans.
The breakthrough for Sporting came in the 83rd minute when Stefan Frei knocked Sporting KC striker Dom Dwyer to the ground in the 18-yard box for a penalty. Benny Feilhaber converted the penalty kick that center referee Ismail Elfath signaled for what would win the match for Sporting.
Frei was shown a yellow card on the play and was furious with the call afterward and after the final whistle.
“That’s never a penalty. I’m sorry,” Sounders coach Sigi Schmid said. “Our goalkeeper comes out, punches the ball, it’s never a penalty.”
Sporting KC coach Peter Vermes said he did not see the penalty call well enough.
“The courage of Dom to go after that ball [was] what resulted in the play for sure,” Vermes said.
The penalty call wasn’t the only major decision that went against the Sounders. A Lamar Neagle goal was ruled offside, though replays appeared to show Neagle behind Marco Pappa at the time of Pappa’s pass to set up the goal.
The matchup included the Sounders as the league’s best defense with only ten goals allowed on the year, while Sporting held the season high for goals scored at 21.
However, Seattle missed several key players in the match, most notably Clint Dempsey due to a child birth. Obafemi Martins also missed due to nose surgery and Chad Barrett did not play due to a hamstring strain. Midfielder Osvaldo Alonso was sidelined with a one-game suspension handed to him by the MLS Disciplinary Committee.
“Those are the way things go, I’m proud of my team,” Sounders coach Sigi Schmid said as he reflected on the match. “We were missing a lot of players.”
In the 58th minute, Dwyer entered the match for Marcel de Jong. Graham Zusi moved to left wing as Sporting took back its typical matchday formation. Dwyer was kept out of the starting lineup due to a groin injury.
The Sounders thought they had scored in the 65th minute as Lamar Neagle knocked in a cross from Marco Pappa, but referee Ismail Elfath ruled Neagle offside.
“We didn’t deserve the win but we deserved at least a tie. We scored a goal that was perfectly onside and it was taken away,” Schmid said.
With only two shots in the second half to Sporting’s five, Seattle tried to preserve the road point as forward Cristian Roldan was substituted in the 77th minute for defender Leonardo Gonzalez.
Schmid said his team switched back to its customary 4-4-2 formation late in the match.
In the 79th minute, the Sounders’ new Brazilian signing Thomas made his Sounders debut with the substitution.
After moving two points behind the Sounders in the West with the victory, Sporting will have a lengthy break from MLS play and will face St. Louis FC next in the US Open Cup on June 16.
on the other call,
if the AR was calling naegle offsides, the AR screwed up,
if the AR was calling pappa offside on the pass before that, I haven’t seen
a replay to challenge that call,
often the AR will see an offside and take a second to realize it, and
then make a late call
Given that his flag is down when Pappa has the ball, it’s pretty clear he called Negale offsides. But I can understand why a homer would have a hard time seeing that.
Frei went through him with his knee,
just as when a person touches the ball first but goes through takes out the
other player is a foul, i.e. a careless challenge
goalkeepers often come out with their knee raised, they claim it’s to protect themselves,
but generally its to intimidate
in this case by coming out with his knee, he put himself in a position where
even when he got to the ball, he took out the player, it was a careless challenge
and he got called for it,
goalkeepers don’t have an extra benefit that they can take out a player with a raised knee
and get away with it, often they do, but in this case he got called for it.
Ref straight up cost Seattle 3 points. Pappa didn’t get a penalty because he didn’t go to ground when he was clearly fouled. The fact you have to fling yourself to the ground to earn a penalty is an absolute joke. Neagle was onside on his goal, although it was close. The penalty given simply wasn’t a penalty. It was actually a good performance from Seattle considering everyone that was missing so its hard to swallow the robbery that occurred.
Pappa was off on the switched ball but MLS refs going to MLS ref
damn 6 points have been gifted to SKC by refs this season already….
BS penalty here and
BS red card and penalty against houston which led to the win…
SKC is one of the whiniest teams in the league… hope they remember these incidents when the decisions go against them but I doubt it..
Like they went against us in Dallas? MLS refs are horrible, and it’s part of the game. There’s no reason not to be upset about it if it goes against you, but it’s not like teams should just let the other team score to make up for a bad call during the game. This time, the way it worked out we had a nailed on penalty not go called, and then a few minutes later they gave us one that was questionable at best (and as I said earlier, I don’t think it was).
Also, what confuses me is that there is no way Frei shouldn’t have ended up with a red. If it was a foul, it was DGSO, and even if the ref just wanted to give a yellow for that, there were about 8 times he should have gotten a second for descent before the penalty was taken. Just more proof MLS refs are out of their depth.
Also, the Houston match was a draw, so, no, we haven’t been “gifted” 6 points. We did earn 1 in Seattle a couple weeks ago when we were in worse shape health wise than either of us were yesterday. This is a good, not great, SKC squad, and one that I think could cause teams some problems in the playoffs, though I think will ultimately fall short of another title.
My bad.. gifted 4 points… good enough
you can always speculate about “no-calls” here and there but clearly mistaken calls such as against Houston (league overturned the red card) and pretty obviously in this case have gifted SKC 4 points they haven’t earned.
There is literally no difference between complaining about a call that should have been made that wasn’t, and one that shouldn’t have been made that was, especially when there is a penalty involved. In this case, it evened out. So I’ll give you 1 point that we’ve been “gifted” this year.
whatever helps you sleep at night dude, you’ve been very fortunate indeed…
Every team in the league can point to alleged “no-calls” that they can claim has denied them points…
This season, few can probably point to clearly mistaken actual calls that have gifted them points in multiple matches and have denied their rivals valuable points
SKC can and from the most distastefully whiny team in the league, I hope they remember that fact.
There is clearly a difference between mistake actual calls and your alleged “no-calls”
Ok, then explain it to me. Why is it ok to complain about a poor decision by the ref that leads *probably* to a goal off of penalty kick, but not complain about a poor decision by the ref that doesn’t lead to *probably* a goal off of penalty kick?
You’re the only one whining here dude.
NO whining allowed.
Except by me, as Sounder’s fan:
We got screwed ( at least on the offsides call )
Make up call if anything.. Too bad the linesman was 5 yards out of position and had to call off neagles goal .. Sad
Was it a good call, yes. Just because he got the ball first doesn’t give him the right to take out the attacker. Is that ever actually called? No, so I can see why Seattle is happy. That should be consistently called, but it isn’t.
Feilhaber has said it should not have been a penalty. Vermes danced around the question and did not answer if it was a penalty.
When the opposing team was surprised by the call, then I think it is safe to say it was a bad call. They’ll take the points and be happy, but they know it was gifted to them.
No, I think it’s safe to say that it’s a call that’s rarely made, not that it’s the wrong call.
I think you’ve got it the other way around. When an attacker takes a shot on goal, he can’t take out the goalie when he is attempting to make a save on the ball. That’s why it was actually a foul on Dwyer.
LOL at Dwyer taking out Frei. Just because it wasn’t a foul on Frei doesn’t mean that it was it was a foul on Dwyer. That’s silly.
Even if that call was bad, there should have been a pk a little before that when dwyer was knocked down in the box. It evened out.
I don’t think that it was a pen. As a former goalkeeper, I side with them quite a bit, though.
Earlier in the game, Marco Pappa was interfered worse in the box with no call.
Worse? I assume that you mean the time that he was able to stay on his feet and get a shot off? You can’t tell me he was interfered with “worse” than a guy that got pushed down onto the ground, when he was able to stay on his feet and get a shot off. Could it have been called a foul? Sure. But it wasn’t nailed on like the one I’m talking about on Dwyer.
After watching the PK replay 30 times, I think I finally can agree with the call. The punch on Dwyer by itself isn’t enough for the call but that combined with the defender holding Dwyer is more then enough for the PK. Also have to conseed that Sporting outplayed Seattle in the second half. The calls were controversial but the final result wasn’t.
If you are calling a foul on the defender, then every single time a two players are in the box, you would have to call a penalty. There is always contact.
If you allow the player to take a shot on goal before you blow the whistle, then you are playing advantage for the attacking team and you can’t go back and call a penalty on the foul. The ref clearly blows the whistle well after the ball was punched away.
Sure you can.
No way that was a penalty kick. Frei’s first contact is to punch the ball away successfully.
This picture says it all. Dwyer was out of control.
http://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/the-full-90/article23321304.html