Sporting Kansas City Manager Peter Vermes
On the 2-1 loss to FC Dallas…
I think we were okay. I don’t think we were good in any particular area of the game in the first half. Obviously we hit the crossbar twice, but that doesn’t really mean anything because it doesn’t add up to any goals. The second half was a better half for us in a lot of ways. It was an interesting day because we scored two goals, there were three goals scored, and we lost 2-1. That was an interesting one.
On Joaquin Fernandez’s own goal…
Nobody wants to score an own goal. I’m not sure if he thinks he’s past the post. I didn’t ask him and haven’t talked to him about it. I don’t know if he thought he was past the post and heading the ball out of bounds. I don’t know what the situation was, but I’ll find out later.
On Zorhan Bassong and Alan Pulido entering as halftime substitutes…
Moving the team around and playing with some different guys helped for sure. They brought a little spark. I thought Erik Thommy going wide was really good. He was on the front foot and taking the game to the other defenders. He got a lot of set pieces and created a lot of havoc in there. We actually moved the ball a lot quicker in the second half than in the first. I thought that Memo Rodriguez had a really good game. All game long he was very, very solid. On their first goal, it’s too easy for the player to get off the shot. We have to be much closer to block that shot, especially when he has his back to goal and turns inside our box. There’s no way that player should be able to get a shot off like that. It wasn’t a really bad performance and it wasn’t a good performance. It was just a lot of the same stuff we’ve encountered all year.
On left back Tim Leibold playing at right back due to injuries in the team…
He was actually pretty good over there.
On center back Joaquin Fernandez…
I thought his first game (two weeks ago) was really good. This game he was solid. It was different for him as well because we’re playing away from home. He hadn’t played away from home yet. There’s a lot to work with there and we’ll see how it goes. The guys who are coming back next year are going to have to be ready for a different challenge. Different intensity, different intensity. Because what happened this year was not enough.
Sporting Kansas City forward William Agada
On his late goal in the 2-1 loss to FC Dallas…
It’s a game where we concede early goals. We just needed to stay focused until the end of the final whistle. They were trying to keep the ball and I saw the pass from the defender. I anticipated it like a striker. You always need to wait for those chances. I was able to steal the ball and that was it.
On how he wants to improve heading into the 2025 season…
It’s one of those seasons where you try and things just don’t go the way you want. For me personally, I just need to stay focused and keep on scoring. I need to listen to the big players around me and especially the big boss on the sideline. He’s always trying to make me better so that I can score more goals. As you can see, there were a lot of chances that we had throughout the season. We didn’t finish as we wanted to. Now we go home and relax a little bit with family and then come back strong for preseason. Personally, right now I’m not even thinking about next season. I just want to go and see my family (in Nigeria). It’s been a long year without seeing my parents. I’m not even thinking about football after this game. I want to see my family for now and then come back to preseason stronger.
