Sporting Kansas City Manager Peter Vermes
On the team not finishing its chances…
There were so many sitters today. You have to score. I mean, it's a simple thing. You have to score. I don't know what you want me to tell you about it. I can't shoot the ball, so I can only tell you that there's probably at least four, maybe a fifth that you could throw in there as well, but there's at least four just unbelievable opportunities. We didn't score.
On the schedule congestion…
No. I wouldn’t put that in there. Nope. We put a group of guys on the field that all had energy and they had an opportunity in front of them as well. They had a real opportunity in front of them. Unfortunately, we didn't get it done. But we sure had the chances. But it has nothing to do with travel. It has nothing to do with midweek and all the other stuff. That's part of what we do. You have got to be ready. We rotated our roster around. We put fresh guys out there. We had subs all lined up. We had all that ready to go. I don't think it was for a lack of that. Now there are some guys that went longer than I thought, but they also went longer because we had the ball for a good portion of the game, especially the whole second half. So it wasn't as if they had to defend and they were wasting a lot of energy there. They could stay on the field, but they didn't kill themselves in this game.
On the play of Marinos Tzionis…
First half, he was very good. I just think we were slow at moving the ball in the second half and we didn't find as many opportunities where he was 1v1. They also made a little bit of a change because they put a couple of different guys out there to be with him one-on-one. And really at that point, they didn't have to go forward anymore. Because they already knew they were down a man and they were just packing it in every time they could. It was for sure hard to break that down, but we created more than enough chances in the game to have walked away with the win.
On the sub of Robert Voloder for Robert Castellanos…
What we did was we went to actually three in the back, and we went to five in the middle of the park, meaning three in the middle, two out wide and two up front. So we actually put on another attacking player to get us into that shape.
Sporting Kansas City captain Roger Espinoza
On not being able to finish any of the team’s chances…
It’s tough to say, tough to say. We created a lot of chances. I like to be a positive guy. I’ll believe that with the chances, if we keep creating chances like that, we'll be in a good spot. At least we're creating them.
On getting ready for Minnesota at home on Saturday…
That's the beauty of soccer. You can right away go play on Saturday and try to win that game. We have some guys that rested tonight, so hopefully on Saturday now we continue with another win at home.
On playing at left back…
Exactly 10 years ago in the FA Cup, I was a left back, so 10 years ago. It felt good. You can go 90 minutes just because you can rest a little bit when the ball is on the other side, on the weak side. But hey, anywhere I can help the team, it doesn't matter where – except for goalie, right, I can't play there -- but anywhere I can help the team, I'm okay with that. It sucks that we lost the game, but if I can help the team anywhere, I'll do it.
On the team being able to focus on league play…
Yeah, we have to go now and worry about MLS. The Open Cup is over and now we have got to be excited because we won last game in Seattle and now we still have a good run to go. We have a few (upcoming) games, one at home and then next week two away. So we’ve got to be ready for that. I just don't know when we're going to have home games. It looks like every game we play is on the road, but I’m happy to be home this weekend.
On playing Houston repeatedly in the U.S. Open Cup…
It doesn't matter. Anybody you have got to play, you’ve gotta go to win. Every game is tough. Every team is tough. It’s easier for us. It’s a quick flight. So I'm not complaining just because we don't have to go far to the east or far to the west coast. It's very close to us. It sucks that we had to play away, but that's the draw that we got. I thought we had the opportunity to win tonight. We created enough chances to win the game.
