Sporting Kansas rally for away win – Coach Vermes reacts

Sporting Kansas 3-2 Colorado Rapids

Coach Vermes reacts:

In the first half and the game overall:
Overall we didn’t play very well today. Credit to [the Colorado Rapids], I thought they were pretty aggressive to the ball and I thought they were trying to play on the front foot. But I think from our perspective we were very slow in our circulation of the ball; we were very slow in our buildup. That’s not the norm of the way we play. I don’t want to make any excuses, but we played five games in 15 days and I think because we were playing Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday-Wednesday, then we had a full week of training and [the team isn’t] used to that rhythm yet. A few guys were heavy during the midweek. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it or not but we just didn’t play well today. Overall we didn’t play well.

On what changed in the second half and getting on the scoreboard:
The one thing that we did very well today is that we responded well. I say that because when I talked to them at halftime, there were something things I was talking about like moving off the ball – we didn’t have that. So we had circulation of the ball and moving off the ball, two things that were very poor for us. And that’s how we scored the goal, moving off the ball, great pass through, [Graham] Zusi ran to the back post, nice pass across, easy finish. We give a penalty kick away, they tie up. We give another one, we have a great response right after. And now we sense that “Hey, maybe we can push this a little bit more and I like the fact that we found the way, we started to manage the game. We also found the way to get a couple chances there at the end when they were down a man. And at the end, Dom [Dwyer] tattoos the hell out of the ball and the keeper has no chance. He smoked it so hard that the goalkeeper didn’t even go for it.

On Eric Kronberg’s performance and the penalty kicks:
Everything was good other than the fact that I think on the first goal, because I don’t know what the penalty kick was – everybody tells me that there was no handball, that it was just… I don’t know what he called but I’ll find out. The fact is either [Kronberg] could have held [the ball] or he should have parried it sideways. Outside of that, for a guy that’s just getting his feet wet but he’s been in the league for as long as he has, he’s coming along. He has a lot of really good qualities.

On the second half and pushing forward:
Keep trying – that’s part of it. The fact that we kept trying to push the game, even though maybe everything wasn’t clicking, we kept trying to do it and trying to do it. It’s definitely a foul from Marvell [Wynne], and it’s a yellow card and he crushes him afterwards. But the point is that we’re trying to play at that point, we’re still trying to do things and that causes that situation, which then now we go up a man and we get the third goal. We take advantage of something where at that point, maybe they could have done some different things, because now it’s 2-2. What do they want to do? Do they want to win? Manage the ball at this point? What do you want to do? The great thing is that we found the way at the end to stick the third one in.