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Sporting Kansas City

Sporting Falls to Philly in MLS Is Back Tournament

July 30, 2020 - Major League Soccer (MLS)
Sporting Kansas City News Release


Sporting Kansas City's run in the historic MLS is Back Tournament ended Thursday with a 3-1 quarterfinal loss to the Philadelphia Union at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Walt Disney World.

The Union struck three times in the space of 15 minutes to build a commanding first-half lead, and although Alan Pulido pulled a goal back on the stroke of intermission, Philadelphia emerged victorious to reach the semifinals and eliminate Sporting from the competition.

With Sporting's participation in the MLS is Back Tournament now complete, the club will begin preparations for the resumption of the 2020 MLS campaign later this summer. MLS plans to continue its 25th season with a revised schedule, followed by the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs and Audi MLS Cup. More details will be announced in the near term.

Manager Peter Vermes made two lineup changes from Sunday's penalty shootout win over Vancouver Whitecaps FC by giving starts to Homegrown duo Gianluca Busio and Daniel Salloi, who replaced Gadi Kinda and Khiry Shelton, respectively. Busio was involved in Sporting's first notable attack at the 18-minute mark, creating a turnover to set up Pulido, but the Mexican's low drive from the right edge of the box was smothered by Philadelphia goalkeeper and MLS saves leader Andre Blake.

In the 24th minute, the Union drew first blood and ended Sporting goalkeeper Tim Melia's MLS shutout streak at 429-minutes dating back to Feb. 29. A flowing move involving Santos, Ray Gaddis and Alejandro Bedoya was finished off by Jamiro Monteiro, who slotted into a gaping net off Bedoya's cross. Philadelphia doubled their advantage just two minutes later, as Santos galloped free on a counterattack following a Sporting set piece and tucked a right-footed shot into the left corner of the net.

Santos bagged his second goal of the night and his third of the tournament on 39 minutes, racing onto Brenden Aaronson's diagonal through ball and side-footing a first-time effort just inside the near post.

Facing a three-goal deficit, Sporting responded with a much-needed tally of their own seconds before halftime. Shortly after Blake sprawled out to push aside Johnny Russell's long-range blast, the Sporting winger found a pocket of space on the right flank and curled a delightful cross to the far post. Pulido was on hand to steer a diving header past Blake for his team-leading fourth goal of the season in all competitions.

Vermes' men began the second half brightly and Pulido nearly notched his brace in glorious fashion four minutes after the restart. His 28-yard free kick bent over Philadelphia's four-man wall and had Blake well beaten, but the ball smacked off the post and denied the Mexican what would have been a glorious strike.

Russell and Pulido continued asking questions of the Union defense, and Sporting thought they had made the score 3-2 in the 57th minute. Russell did brilliantly to beat multiple defenders along the right endline before crossing low to Pulido, whose sliding attempt was blocked by Blake. The rebound was poked home by Russell, but the forward was deemed to have been in an offside position.

A pair of second-half substitutes conjured threats of their own as Sporting remained on the front foot, with Kinda and Gerso Fernandes both seeing their left-footed efforts turned away by Blake.

QUOTES

Sporting Kansas City Manager Peter Vermes

Thoughts on the match...

As the whistle blew, the other team wanted the game and we, as a team, we didn't. We were not in the game. It took three goals to wake us up. That's the simple thoughts on the game. By the time we woke up, unfortunately, things didn't fall our way. We deserved that based on the fact that they wanted it more than us and that was really the game. Defensively, it's not the defense. It's the team. It's the mentality to go and compete and win the game. We didn't want to go and compete and win the game today.

On the team's resurgence after falling behind 3-0...

I thought when we were 2-0, I thought we were still capable to get back in the game. When it went 3-0 and with the goals that we gave up on two of our set pieces, shame on us. I'm very disappointed in that respect. I never have a problem getting beat by a team that just does incredible things against us. To be fair to them, they did. They scored two very good goals on counters. We were completely unorganized. There were so many other aspects of the game that we were just not good enough. Did I ever think that we were in the game? I always think that. I have a belief personally that we can come back. But when you see that there's not life in the team -- there were individuals that worked hard and wanted to win and wanted to fight -- but unfortunately, the game is not played as individuals. It's played as a team and today the team was not ready to win. We didn't compete.

On why the team started so slow...

I only have one thing when that happens. It's my fault. I can easily take blame because if the team's not ready, it's my fault. The team wasn't ready and it is my fault. Very seldom in my time as a coach at this club have I gone into a game with our team where they came out and they just weren't into the game and they didn't want to win, especially a knockout round. We've won plenty of Open Cups. We've been in playoff games. To come out and play the way we did in the first half, it was embarrassing. That's on me. I'm not sure why that is. The good thing is that I have some time to figure that out. And figuring that out is going to be at the expense of everyone else, meaning all of the players on the team, because I can't sit through 90 minutes of the kind of game we had today. Even though I thought in the second half we tried to come back, it's easy when you're down 2-0 or 3-0 to all of a sudden now start to fight and the other team takes their foot off the gas pedal. The psychological change in your mind is an easy one. It's what do you do when it's 0-0 and how do you play. When it was 0-0, we fell very, very short of our quality. The positive is that we played three games that meant something toward our season and as of right now, we're still at least at the top of the west. But we need to get our act together because we can't play games like that against teams in the West because they're too good. They fight for everything. I said from the beginning that I thought that San Jose is the favorite. Their guys, they work. They're the hardest working team in Major League Soccer at the moment. They deserve to get the credit. They deserve to be talked about because of the way that they go after the game, all the players on the team. We're not even in that class. We're not even close.

Sporting Kansas City midfielder Roger Espinoza

On Peter taking responsibility for the slow start...

Sure, the coach says that. He's going to blame himself. But as players, we've been here for a long time at this club and we know what the expectations are. It doesn't matter if it's a friendly or a league game or if it's a competition in a tournament. Our job is to get out there and play very hard - as hard as we can. Because those are the expectations Kansas City has set over the years. We did not do that today. There were parts of the game where we did that, but when we tried to do that we were already 3-0 down. I think we can improve on that and we can also blame ourselves for it, too.

On what the team could have done better to start the game more positively...

What could have been done different? I think, when you get into a game, you have to win balls. You have to win the ball and you have to control the ball. I thought that we didn't do well on second balls. I thought we did pressure okay and then when the goalkeeper had the chance to do that, we didn't win the balls that were necessary. That goes for everybody. That goes for myself and everybody else on the team. We didn't do a good job at the beginning. We didn't do a good job on the set pieces and the counters. That's something that over the years we've been known for to be very good. Today, we didn't do that. Nobody recovered in time. We were a bit lazy. I think that cost us the game. When we tried to come back, it was too late.

On his takeaways from the tournament...

Let's not forget that as a group we have fought hard in some games. We're still first in the West. We need to fight. We need to regroup together. I know we have it in us. Tonight, we didn't. I don't know why - for many reasons. There's no excuses. We've got to come back and fight because we have still got a league to play. We started very slow at the beginning of the tournament. I don't know if it was the change of weather, the change of time or whatever it was, but we were able to regroup and we made it this far. I'm proud of the guys for fighting. Obviously, it didn't happen early in the game but we still need to regroup because we know the expectations. We know how to win. We've done that in the past. We just need to keep improving and hopefully when we come back, we're ready for that. We can now go and reminisce and think about what happened and what we can do better as players and as a team.

Sporting Kansas City midfielder Ilie Sanchez

On what was missing tonight...

The ambition. We didn't play to win the game. We didn't deserve it. I think we lacked ambition to go start the game in the right way. Other than that, I could start saying all the things we did wrong but if we don't have the ambition and the desire to win, it doesn't make sense to talk about what we did wrong during the game.

Sporting Kansas City is owned by Sporting Club, an entity founded by a group of local business and community leaders comprised of the Patterson Family, Cliff Illig, Pat Curran, Greg Maday and Robb Heineman. Sporting prides itself on a commitment and vision to provide high-performance experiences. Sporting Club purchased the team from the Hunt Sports Group in 2006, and under its direction has opened Swope Soccer Village, Children's Mercy Park, Compass Minerals Sporting Fields and Compass Minerals National Performance Center while investing in the Sporting KC Academy and Sporting Kansas City II for developing local youth into homegrown talent. A charter member of Major League Soccer, Sporting are two-time MLS Cup champions (2000, 2013) and four-time winners of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup (2004, 2012, 2015, 2017).

MLS is Back Tournament

Knockout Stage presented by Audi | Quarterfinals

ESPN Wide World of Sports | Walt Disney World in Florida

Attendance: 0

Weather: 86 degrees and partly cloudy

Score 1 2 F

Sporting Kansas City 1 0 1

Philadelphia Union 3 0 3

Sporting Kansas City: Tim Melia; Graham Zusi, Roberto Puncec, Graham Smith, Luis Martins (Amadou Dia 46'); Ilie Sanchez (Felipe Hernandez 64'), Roger Espinoza (Cameron Duke 84'), Gianluca Busio (Gadi Kinda 46'); Johnny Russell, Alan Pulido (C), Daniel Salloi (Gerso Fernandes 64')

Subs Not Used: Richard Sanchez, Matt Besler, Jaylin Lindsey, Winston Reid, Wan Kuzain, Erik Hurtado, Tyler Freeman

Philadelphia Union: Andre Blake; Ray Gaddis, Jack Elliott, Mark McKenzie, Kai Wagner; Alejandro Bedoya (C), Jose Martinez, Jamiro Monteiro (Anthony Fontana 86'), Brenden Aaronson (Matt Real 86'); Kacper Przybylko (Andrew Wooten 71'), Sergio Santos (Ilsinho 53')

Subs Not Used: Joe Bendik, Aurelien Collin, Jakob Glesnes, Olivier Mbaizo, Jack De Vries, Matej Oravec, Cole Turner, Michee Ngalina

Scoring Summary:

PHI -- Jamiro Monteiro 1 (Alejandro Bedoya 1, Sergio Santos 1) 24'

PHI -- Sergio Santos 2 (unassisted) 26'

PHI -- Sergio Santos 3 (Brenden Aaronson 1) 39'

SKC -- Alan Pulido 1 (Johnny Russell 1) 45+1'

Misconduct Summary:

PHI -- Jose Martinez (yellow card; unsporting behavior) 25'

PHI -- Jack Elliott (yellow card; unsporting behavior) 53'

SKC -- Gerso Fernandes (yellow card; unsporting behavior) 71'

Stat SKC PHI

Shots 16 7

Shots on Goal 7 3

Saves 0 6

Fouls 16 18

Offsides 3 2

Corner Kicks 7 1

Referee: Ramy Touchan

Assistant Referee: Micheal Barwegen

Assistant Referee: Jeremy Kieso

Fourth Official: Allen Chapman

VAR: Robert Sibiga

AVAR: Logan Brown

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