PORTLAND, OR – Sporting Kansas City arrived in Portland on Sunday looking to extend their two-game winning streak and get their first win away from home since April. Ninety minutes of hard-fought soccer later, the visitors once found themselves heading home empty handed.
Looking back at the match, Kansas City coach Peter Vermes was left ruing Sporting's mistakes and missed chances, particularly after the game was turned on its head by a pair of first-half red cards to the Portland Timbers' Diego Chara and SKC's Soni Mustivar.
"The game wasn't a 3-0 game," Vermes told the press after the match. "They finished a couple of chances at the end of the game. What I would say is that we actually played better when we were 11 on 11 than when we went up a man."
In a match that saw Sporting go on the road and dominate the possession statistic, keeping the Timbers pinned back for long stretches of time, giving up three second half goals on just four shots on frame leaves a bad taste in the visitors' mouths.
"We got too direct," Vermes continued, "which I thought let them off the hook too many times, and I would say that all three goals came from major mistakes on our part. I don't mean the final shot on goal. I mean that the plays occurred because of decisions on our part."
Equally as important as the team's defensive mistakes, Vermes said, was his side's lack of finishing. Despite out shooting the packed-in Timbers in the first half, Kansas City could not make anything of their chances in front of goal.
"You have to score," he said. "We had a ton of chances in and around their goal. There were probably 30 minutes in the second half where we were around the 18-yard box, 25 yards in. We have to score."
The lack of a goal was made all the more frustrating for SKC by their strong play throughout the rest of the match.
"I thought we were really good," Vermes said. "If we would have scored a goal then it would have put them even more under pressure and it wouldn't have given them the life that they got. We would have tied it up and we could have kept going."
