MLS: Sporting Kansas City 4-0 FC Dallas
Sporting Kansas City manager Peter Vermes reacts after the win:
On Sporting KC’s 4-0 win over FC Dallas…
The guys are in good form, and I think more importantly we are defending very well. We didn’t give away anything big, and I think it all resulted in the way we started to counter. We had great movement of the ball. We had four goals, and we probably should have had six or seven, but we’ll take it
On Sporting KC scoring four goals for the third time in six games…
As I said to the guys at halftime, I think that you always get concerned when you’re up a man, especially when you come in at halftime. All of a sudden you start to relax and you take your foot off the gas pedal a little bit, and mentally you can sort of figure that everything is gonna be okay and the difference is we talked about it at halftime is that our mentally has to even go up a notch because the whole point is you gotta try to get that second, and if you can get that, you can bury them. We got the second and the third and the floodgates opened. Credit to the guys, because it’s not easy the fact that we’re playing a lot of different players in the field. Guys are coming back from injury, they’re not fully fit, and when I say that I mean full-game fitness, and we’re getting great efforts from everybody so credit to the guys.
On finishing the month of May unbeaten…
It’s great. The games that we’ve played here recently, we’ve gotten good results. Going out to Seattle the way we did last week with Dom having to pull out right before the game; it was getting ready to begin and having to make a change and bring other players on and just us being able to get a result there like we did. At one point there we actually had a chance if Krisztian could have stuck that throw-in early. We had that bounced right to him and he hit over the net. Maybe if he hits the back of the net it makes the game a little different. Being able to play the way we did against New England, who was in very good form at that time, Dallas same thing, they’re great results for us. But we have to keep getting better, because we still have a lot of places where we can do some damage, and I think the guys would agree, and that’s one of the great things about them, they’ll continue to keep working.
On Sporting KC’s improvement over the last month…
At the end of the day, we’re just playing well and we’re hitting the back of the net. So, that part is good. But you have to echo what Graham said. At the end of day, as a player, when you have the opportunity to come out and play in front of a sold out stadium 60-times in a row, and they’re into the game. I’ve always said, especially now, the thing has become, now, the fans, as we’re on the move, if you will, during the build-up, they understand what’s coming. You can hear the level of the crowd sort of advance as we move up the field. They grow stronger as we go up the field. It’s exciting. It’s good that we could reward them tonight with this. They deserved it, we needed it for us as well. The three points continue to come as we just need to continue to get results here at home and be tough to play against on the road. Since 2011, we’re the best team on the road in the league. We have to continue to keep being a hard team to play.
FC Dallas manager Oscar Pareja
On FC Dallas’s 4-0 defeat to Sporting KC…
The game became a lot more difficult [after Zach Loyd’s red card]. We didn’t play well defensively, and I thought we made a lot of mistakes. We take responsibility for that and we move on. Kansas City was obviously better than us tonight.
On Sporting KC’s performance at home…
Kansas City is an intense team. When we faced them at home we experienced that. So we know what we face when we come here. In part of the first half, we matched their intensity well until we got the red card. And then the concentration defensively just went downwards. We gave away a lot of options that we don’t normally do, but we have to be mature. Games like this are difficult to swallow. As the leader of this group, I take the responsibility and we move on.
On the key to bouncing back with three straight road games still to play…
We need more. We have had good stages where we are winning games and we have had stages where we aren’t getting results. That’s how it goes; it happens. It’s a long journey, we say it all the time. We have to keep the calm. We have a good team and a good group, and we will stick to our plan. Today unfortunately we didn’t play well at all. We had to play with 10 [men] again which is something we’re trying to correct. All those things will be analyzed. But we are sticking to the plan. We believe in these guys.
On the competitiveness of MLS…
This league is very competitive. Both conferences are tough, and obviously the Western Conference became [tougher] this year. That’s the beauty of our league. I think the competitiveness in every game shows.
