Sporting Kansas City battled longtime Western Conference rival Colorado Rapids on Saturday in the second exhibition of the club’s 2021 preseason, presented by Children’s Mercy. The narrow 1-0 defeat at Kino North Complex in Tucson, Arizona, was highlighted by the preseason debut of newly acquired French midfielder Remi Walter, who logged 45 first-half minutes for Sporting. Post-match remarks from Manager Peter Vermes are below.
On Sporting’s overall performance…
It was a very good, competitive match for us from start to finish. I think that two weeks (into preseason), a lot of the foundational principles that we’ve been working on are showing up, which is really good. There are other aspects of our game that will improve immensely as we continue to get close and closer to be fit for a 90-minute match. Right now, it’s still early in the preseason for us. The movement and that fitness to be able to transition from defense to offense and offense to defense needs to be much better, but it’s going to get better with more fitness.
On the performance of midfielder Remi Walter…
Very good. He’s a very astute soccer player in the game. He reads situations that are happening and really knows how to deal with them. I’m very satisfied and very happy with his performance and he brings a lot of quality to the team. Him spending more time with us is going to be very important, and we’ll just move forward from there.
On Sporting’s attacking display…
From a buildout perspective, (we had) the ability to get in and around the goal with the kind of chances that we created. Part of it was that we had an increased workload this week, and that’s by design. It was evident as the game got a little bit longer after the first 25 or 30 minutes, you could start to see the fatigue in the team. That’s to be expected with an increased load over the week and a lot of the concepts that we’re asking them to do. That’s why I’m a big believer that those things will continue to improve immensely as we get more fit for 90 minutes.
On the performance of unsigned MLS SuperDraft pick Matt Constant…
He’s still sticking around and that bodes well for him. It’s important for us to see him play 11-v-11 and he did himself a solid performance today for the amount of time that he played for 30 minutes. That’s good on his part. I feel that he’s got some interesting qualities that we’ll continue to evaluate moving forward.
On the chances that Sporting created throughout the match…
A lot of the chances that we created were by design, meaning that our movement on and off the ball in the first half was really, really good. Our wide play was very good other than we were just off a little bit. You could tell the guys had some heavy legs, so they weren’t as sharp. Again, that’s to be expected and it happens. Chances were also created by some really good defensive organization, so I believe what I saw in the game today were some very good foundational principles that we have been teaching and having repetitions in training. At the end, the key is going to be that once we get fit, we can keep that concentration and recognition of situation and then do the things that we (want) physically on a consistent basis. I believe we’ll get there.
