Two weeks ago, a short-handed Sporting Kansas City team sat back and defended for 90 minutes to earn a point against Sounders FC at CenturyLink Field. One may have thought the roles would reverse Saturday night at Sporting Park, but that was hardly the case.
Despite four of their starters being unavailable for the match, the Rave Green put pressure on SKC throughout the game and finished with six shots on target to the home team’s four. Possession numbers were fairly even, with Kansas City owning a slight advantage at 54 percent. A penalty-kick goal by Benny Feilhaber in the 84th minute gave Sporting a 1-0 win, its first MLS regular-season victory over Seattle since 2009.
Sounders FC went with a 4-2-3-1 formation for just the second time this season. SKC had netted four goals in each of its previous two home matches, so while the result wasn’t what they hoped for, the Sounders have plenty of positives to take from Saturday night’s contest.
Here’s what Head Coach Sigi Schmid and his players said after the match.
Sigi Schmid:
“We’re disappointed. I thought we deserved to get something out of the game tonight. I don’t know if we deserved a win, but we deserved at least a tie. …I’m proud of my team. I thought we did a good job, considering we were missing a lot of players. We had some really good looks, some really good chances. We bent a little bit in the back, but we were OK.”
Andy Rose:
“Certainly, the guys are frustrated. We’ll look back on it and look at the positives. Obviously we had a lot of key players missing, and guys had to play in unfamiliar positions and put in a real shift against a very good team. I feel like we had some good chances in the first half. And they didn’t have too many big opportunities, so we defended well. I’m pretty proud of that.”
Zach Scott:
“Regardless of who’s in there, we’re still a possession team that’s going to take our chances and get in behind the opponent. I thought we had better chances than they did today. It’s something we can build on. We’re going to keep our heads high and just look towards next week.”
