Photo by Denny Medley/USA Today Sports
By SKYLAR ROLSTAD
After Sporting Kansas City’s 2-1 win over the Montreal Impact Saturday night, the team’s eighth straight home win in all competitions, one may have expected a much more cheerful Peter Vermes.
Instead, the Sporting KC manager was satisfied with the three points, but lamented the inability to control the game.
“We weren’t great with possession, but we were really good with creating chances,” Vermes said. “They were better with possession.”
SKC jumped out to a 2-0 lead by the 34th minute with a fourth-minute goal from Benny Feilhaber kickstarting the festivities. Dom Dwyer, assisted by Feilhaber, added the team’s second in the 34th minute before the team succumbed to the Impact’s initiative to fight back from the deficit.
Sporting uncharacteristically conceded 61.7 percent of the game’s possession to the Impact but recorded 10 shots to the Impact’s six. The difference, however, may have been Sporting’s ability to win the ball in meaningful situations, as Kansas City won 28 tackles to Montreal’s 16.
For Feilhaber’s first goal, that was evident when Roger Espinoza won the ball from Marco Donadel 25 yards from goal. Having advanced the ball into the 18-yard box, Feilhaber pounced to score in the fourth minute and help SKC ease into the game with complete confidence.
That confidence was dented a bit int he 55th minute, as Ignacio Piatti brought the Impact to within a goal. Unfortunately for the Impact, that goal was as close as they could come, as SKC killed the game to earn the three points.
Vermes does believe there are positives to be taken from his team’s ability to weather the storm and earn a difficult victory, but the Sporting KC head coach would like to see his side be just a bit more decisive in putting teams to the sword to limit any doubt.
“[The early lead] takes a lot of pressure off and makes the other team have to give a lot more,” Vermes said. “We chased the game quite a bit. I thought we created some really quality chances tonight but just didn’t finish them.”
Although Feilhaber himself was not disappointed with the three points, he admitted Sporting could work on the way they were gained.
“It was a bit of an ugly win. I don’t think we played the way we want to play at home,” Feilhaber said. “The mindset changes a little bit that [the Impact] have to come at us. We could have done a better job at continuing to emphasize the things we were good at.”
Maybe if we continue to gripe about it over and over on a website, JK will change his mind about Benny.
Come on, guys. We just gotta believe.
haha you said it better than i did.
As usual, Benny looked good. And as usual, Jurgen will keep his blinders on and say Corona is ahead of him in the pecking order. LOL
Yes, you nailed it Chris.
I don’t find anything wrong with wanting a certain player on the team but blaming the coach and his “blinders” is kinda bratty. why does he have to agree with you? maybe he thinks “it’s taken until 30 for him to finally develop more than a 1 dimensional game, but we’re going in a younger direction and only the older guys that have already proven themselves useful will get calls ups.” again i’m not agreeing or disagreeing with that hypothetical statement but at the end of the day its the coaches choice. maybe Benny left rude messages on his answering machine or maybe JK just does like his face, who knows, who cares. want him on the team all you want but you can’t use that as ammo against the coach.
Davis, Jurgen doesn’t have to agree with me (or common sense apparently), but we don’t have a midfielder in our team who can unlock a defense like Benny can. He offers something that few others (if any) offer in our pool. But this is par for the course for a coach who didn’t bring Donovan to the WC when he would have been our best player at 3 different positions.
-____- aaaand we’re done here…
Sorry that’s the best you can offer -____-
you’re response to my reply was redundantly circumlocutory; thus I realized there was little point explaining to someone of you stature…
JK may wear different colored glasses than everyone else but i really doubt he has blinders on. He undoubtedly watches every single player remotely close to being MNT ready. His objective is to win important games now but also down the line and that requires molding certain players in a system when they’re young. And to do that of course he’ll have preferences – which have always very clearly been for two-way midfield players – like any coach would.
But that’s just the thing – Benny is a far more two way player than Corona, who continues to get looks while Feilhaber doesn’t. It’s frustrating because I think Feilhaber has a unique skill set compared to others in our pool.
only this season has Benny become a two way player. Corona has done that his whole career. Corona is a true CM rather than a CAM while Benny is a Cam that has admittedly worked on his defense to become a two way player…
We’re hot but we really need reinforcements. We can’t always expect three rookies to get the job done.