Sporting Kansas City’s hopes of winning the Concacaf Champions League were diminished greatly by Liga MX Monterrey on Thursday night.
Monterrey trounced the Major League Soccer side 5-0 in the first leg of two-legged semifinal series down in Mexico.
Dorian Pabon was the first Monterrey attacker to rip through the Sporting KC defense in the seventh minute.
Pabon latched on to an assist from Rogelio Funes Mori, darted past a pair of defenders and opened up the floodgates on a long night for the Sporting KC defense.
Seven minutes later, Aviles Hurtado finished from close range at the right post after Tim Melia failed to collect the ball near the goal line.
Monterrey continued to thrash the Sporting KC back line in the second half, with Jesus Gallardo depositing the third goal in the 55th minute following a surging run down the left side of the penalty area.
Things went from bad to worse in the 70th minute, when Nicolas Sanchez sent his penalty kick into the roof of the net.
Hurtado earned the penalty kick after he was brought down in the middle of the box.
Monterrey finished off its impressive offensive performance in the 76th minute, when Pabon finished off a cross from Rodolfo Pizarro
The five-goal outburst from Monterrey sent it into the second leg next Thursday at Children’s Mercy Park with a significant advantage.
All it’ll take is one away goal from the Liga MX side in Kansas City to officially finish off the series and send it into the final.
Yep we got smoked. A great lesson to MLS that we have much work to do. Yeah it would be great if we could spend more on players. But more DPs is not the only answer. American players need to be better. Doubling Zusi’s salary will not make him any better.
It’s naive for Peter Vermes and SKC players to have thought that they could go toe to toe with Monterrey on the road. They should have sat back and organized their defense much tighter than what they did on Thursday night. Be happy to have gone home down 0-3 or less and faced a much better chance to rebound in the return leg. Don’t take more than you can chew. That’s the reality.
I love this tourney for one very good reason. Results don’t lie, competition is a great measuring stick for fans/accountability to MLS. It doesn’t allow MLS to hide- to operate in an isolated bubble selling themselves as better than they are. They are improving, but have a lot of work left to do and quite frankly- more money to invest if they want to meet their stated goals in the time-frames they set out. If you want to be world class in 10 years- you’d best do better at competing on your own continent. Last year gave some hope but- wake up call…. they didn’t remotely look in the same class as Liga MX this go around. Back to work!
MLS will never compete in this competition until they have rosters with more than 3 designated players. They just don’t have the depth to compete.
Just a reminder that the US could have had Jona Gonzales competing with the likes of Michael Bradley and Will Trap for the holding mid spot, but the USSF didn’t deem him good enough to go all out for, or at best, they were just incompetent during a transition period.
“All it’ll take is one away goal from the Liga MX side in Kansas City to officially finish off the series and send it into the final.”
Haha, sorry but unless I read the scoreline wrong, this one is already over. Disappointing result for MLS to add to all the others in CCL. Mexico’s ascendancy to top of the region is complete. They are clear favorites for Gold Cup. We are a pretty distant #2 right now.
SKC looked threatening the first 2 mins of play….that’s it!!!! They seem to lack passing accuracy, the pace of the game, quickness to the ball, make-up speed during counters against Monterrey……
Some teams can fake it some and some can actually perform. Trying to go toe-to-toe with Monterrey was a bad idea. The difference in technical skills between the two teams is abysmal.
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On a side note, Monterrey had three of their academy products on the field last night. One of them, along with Funes Mori,was deemed not good enough in the US and had to emigrate to get a chance. Just in case somebody wants to start talking about salary cap.
An amazingly poor performance by SKC. I stopped watching once it became 4-0 since it was obvious that SKC was already done. One give away after another gifted a couple of goals. I think it was on the 3rd goal that Monterrey scored easily because a defender didn’t run hard and let his man go unmarked at the far post. It looked like a varsity team vs. a jv team. When Monterrey would high press, SKC usually gave the ball away with a bad pass. When SKC tried to do the same, Monterrey broke it easily.