Sporting Kansas City and the Montreal Impact squared off Saturday night and whatever the result of that game would end up being would shape the end of the season in the Eastern Conference. Sporting led the Eastern Conference over Montreal by four points heading into the game. Montreal still has to play two more games than Sporting so the margin isn’t as big as it shows. The game, however, would give one team an advantage if they could get a result. A Sporting win would stretch their lead to a possible seven points and break them apart of the other teams to land a playoff spot. A Montreal win would put them behind by one point with two more games to play and the Eastern Conference would be wide open with about six teams in the hunt for first place.
Sporting KC started off a step behind with their back four. Central defenders Aurelien Collin and Matt Besler were unavailable because of suspension and the Gold Cup so Ike Opara and Lawrence Olum started in their place along with Chance Myers and Seth Sinovic.. The rest of the lineup remained relatively the same except for Peterson Joseph being in the midfield with Oriol Rosell and Graham Zusi. Soony Saad, Claudio Bieler and Kei Kamara remained in their roles up front.
Montreal played a very European game and I mean that in both a good and bad sense. Fluid passing and beautiful through balls were giving the Impact some great scoring chances and only the miraculous Jimmy Nielsen could keep Montreal from having it be a goal fest. At the same time, Montreal was diving like it was going out of style. Very jagged play from both teams with lots of fouls was preventing any sort of noticeable flow to the game. Sporting, and their notoriously physical style, played right into the Impact’s game plan and resulted in a total of 38 fouls and five yellow cards with Sporting getting four of those cards.
After a hard fought 95 minutes by both teams, the scoring drought ended with Montreal grabbing the game winner. The fear was that with Olum and Opara as the center backs, they would be the ones who would make a costly mistake. In fact, it was Myers who was caught flat-footed in the middle allowing Blake Smith to be wide open to grab the easy goal. This isn’t the first time Sporting has allowed a team to take points late into stoppage time. Quite honestly, I lost count how many times it’s happened since 2011. It’s happened at least six or so times over the past two years. It’s happened twice against Dallas, about three times against Seattle, once against Vancouver and now against Montreal that I know of. Sporting has come back late in games too but it’s tough when seeing a team consistently lose points very late in the game. It definitely isn’t a lack of talent because the team has proven they can compete with anyone in MLS and win, I think it’s more psychological. If Sporting is leading or tied, and it’s going into stoppage time or close to stoppage time and Sporting just seems to turn off the engines and coast to the final whistle and it costs them at times. On the other hand, when they’re losing and it’s close to the end, they seem to get it together and score late to save some points they almost lost so they can definitely play late in the game. With this happening multiple times with Seattle, Dallas and the consecutive losses to Houston in the playoffs, it may be a psychological hurdle that Sporting needs to overcome because they only do this to certain teams. Sporting KC may want to look into getting a sport psychologist to help players deal with those issues on the field. The concept of having a sport psychologist is an evolving concept but not one that has been universally adapted. How I look at it is that it’s much cheaper to hire a sport psychologist and have a better shot at winning games and titles than sign new talent in hopes things will change.
In case you have been living under a rock the past few days, Kansas City is hosting the MLS All Star Game against Roma this Wednesday and the entire city has taken this game by storm. Concerts, pick up games, activities, watch parties and much more are planned to occur and we haven’t even gotten to the game. KC is really treating this buildup to the game as a sort of welcome village to media, fans and the league to show that they really are the future hub of American soccer. I hope everyone has fun whether being in KC or watching the game at home and enjoy.
(image courtesy of USA Today Sports Images)
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