Sporting Kansas lead the way in MLS.
Sporting Kansas signed their biggest victory of the season at the home of the Atlanta United 2-0. With the win Sporting Kansas against the top team in the Eastern Conference, SKC take over the Supporters’ Shield and sent a statement to the rest of the League.
Sporting Kansas Coach Vermes on the big win:
“Probably the best team in the league, I’d say. They are. Probably make the comparison – years ago, you remember ‘The Greatest Show on Turf’ with the Rams? It’s kind of the same thing here too. I told Tata (Martino) this is a great environment, this club has done an unbelievable job, the stadium, the players that they have brought in, the way they built their team, fans obviously are connected with the way they play.
The one thing when you come in here, which we knew we had to do, was there was a big objective for them to try to score the first goal and break us psychologically. Haven’t seen the VAR situation yet, but we have been burned on that before so whether we got one, I don’t know. The fact that they didn’t score that first goal and I thought we came out and played with some confidence.
Not easy to come to this place and keep the ball. Unfortunately, for (Brad Guzan), he has to make that play. If he doesn’t take out Khiry (Shelton), Khiry goes in and taps it in to an open net. In some cases, it didn’t necessarily help us all that much. It did, but it didn’t, right?
Because if you don’t get anything out of it, you still have to score after that. It is still 0-0. What happened in the box probably would have been a different situation, get a penalty kick, whatever. The last thing I would say is that (Atlanta) put a good effort in the last 10 minutes of the game to really try to pull one back, but Tim (Melia) was at a different level.”
Atlanta coach Martino on the loss:
“We decided to play in this formation because of the style that Kansas City plays. They are a team that likes to build out the back. We knew that if we played in our 4-2-3-1 system that we had to pressure those guys one-on-one all the way up the field, and if we had stuck with our five at the back system we would have let them play out of the back without any pressure and that would have opened up all of their passing lanes that they like to create.
I thought before the game, and I still think, that this formation was the best way to play against teams like Kansas City that like to build out of the back. Peter (Vermes) is very strong in this league. Kansas City and Columbus have a style of play that make them among the best teams. When we were playing 11 vs. 11, I thought we were playing better than Kansas City.”
