Sporting Kansas City Manager Peter Vermes
Thoughts on the game...
I think you can sum it up pretty simple. I think we gave up four soft goals. We scored three. If we put them all together, we probably had about 10 really good chances including the penalty kick. I can't deny the fight of the guys, but defensively it’s just too soft. The goals are too easy. Two of the goals, we lose possession in the middle of the park and they just go right down on us. Unfortunately, it's very similar to what has happened in many other games. Even last game, we were fighting our way back in the game and then we just gave up just a nothing goal. It buries the team. It buries the team. (Erik) Thommy hits Willy (Agada) in the head. That ball is going in the top corner. He hits the one off the post there. There's just a ton of chances that we could be way ahead and we just aren't. But we also just can't give up the goals that we gave up. That's really it. That's the game.
On Agada and Afrifa starting…
Those guys were playing no matter what. I don’t want to be disrespectful to them. They got to start because that's the way we're going to play. We created a ton of chances. We also missed quite a few. Salt Lake is a good team. They're organized. They fight really hard in a lot of individual actions. But we created a ton of chances against them. I wouldn't say that they did. I think there was one where Tim (Melia) had to make a save, where it was a really good chance for them. I think their chances came off of us. We were too easy to play through.
Thoughts on Jake Davis...
He was good. I didn't have other players to bring in. But Nemanja (Radoja) puts a lot of work in a lot of games. So I was trying to give him some minutes off and bring somebody in fresh in Memo (Rodriguez). Jake probably should have come off as well, even though he only played limited minutes in the last game. He sometimes gets a little tired towards the end of the game, but he was good.
Thoughts on Fontas...
I get it. But we were also very naive in those situations. Again, those spaces could have been covered very easily. We were just incredibly naive. First off, on two of the goals, we lose the ball right in midfield on very simple balls. We turn it over and now we're opened up and now we're trying to recover and there's a lot of space on the field. When you do that, teams can punish you and they did on those two chances. They punished us on both. On the other one, they went coast to coast basically in three passes and scored. But again, we left ourselves way too open and not compact enough defensively.
On the tactical approach…
We played a little different formation today. We played a 4-4-2. (Erik) Thommy was a little bit more underneath and Thommy had a little bit more of a free reign. I wanted to make sure that Willy (Agada) was sort of the reference point in the middle and high and also in the box when the ball was wide. For the most part, that worked. I think we created a lot of chances. You can't deny the fight all the way to the very end. You can't deny that on the guys. It's there. It's just you dig yourself such a deep hole in the kind of goals and the number of goals that you give up in these games. It's just too easy.
On Robert Voloder replacing Andreu Fontas…
We were talking about it at halftime of doing that. We've just played on the weekend. We traveled. I only subscribe to that because it's nowadays. I wouldn't have subscribed to that back in my day playing. But it is the way it is and so you could see that fatigue was setting in. It's one of the reasons why we also changed the team around. We needed some freshness in the group and I think we got that. I say again, I think that we created a lot of chances. It wasn't for them giving balls away. It was different. We won a lot of balls. We created a lot of stuff off of things that we put in the game. It’s just unfortunate we couldn't score a couple more goals.
On Tim Leibold’s late scratch…
He tweaked his quad in warmups. I thought (Zorhan Bassong) played really well last game against LA. It was just more that he hasn't played a tonand I just didn't want to bury him physically. But now he's for sure going to have to be in again.
Sporting Kansas City forward Stephen Afrifa
Thoughts on the match…
Obviously I’m disappointed. We scored three goals and we still lose the game. It’s a team effort. I felt like we had control most of the game. It didn't work out the way we wanted. It's annoying. There are a lot of things we have to work on, but little positives here and there so we have just got to build on those and keep pushing.
On the team’s attack…
Energy. It’s something we're always asked to come out with and we managed to do it. We created a lot of chances. We could have put a few away if we were lucky. But that's all this league is. Whoever comes out with the energy usually comes out on top. So that's what we have got to keep focusing on.
On his goal…
I was just sitting in a pocket. Normally when Thommy leaves that area, he always tells me to tuck in there. It’s kind of an automatic thing now. I'll just drift in there when he's not there. I just turned and looked up, took my touch and I saw the goalie sliding over so just a quick shot back across. That’s pretty much it.
On the team’s chance creation…
A lot of things you can say are different. How they play and how we set up probably just worked best today. It gave us a lot of chances. I got to go 1v1 a lot. Willy got his chances. Tactics worked and we got the chances.
On his growth…
It’s just a learning curve. Every game I start is a lot different than subbing on so I have just got to keep pushing with it. I feel a lot more comfortable now. I have got to keep going and getting these opportunities because, at the end of the day, they're going to help me out a lot.
On what’s needed to get results…
It's a very good question. I’m not sure. It’s a lot of different things. We have got to lock down defensively as a team. I feel like we let down our back line a lot. We’re making it way too easy for teams to get through us. One or two passes and they're running at our back line every game or every chance they get it seems like. So it’s a lot of different things.
Sporting KC defender Zorhan Bassong
On being a late addition to the starting lineup…
Even when I'm on the bench, I'm trying to stay ready for the game. I was really surprised to come in because I didn't get time to warm up seriously. As soon as he told me that I was going to come in, I was just trying to focus and get on the task real quick. And that's it. I have always got to stay focused. I have always got to stay ready.
On the goals conceded…
I feel like they never really put us so much in danger. I feel like there's always little mistakes. We didn't take our guy in the midfield. Sometimes we're losing the ball for nothing. We don't have any pressure. So it’s all those little details. This is what we have got to work hard on to not let those happen. It's not normal to concede four goals in a game like this two times in a row. I think we have just got to work on this -- work on our positioning and work on keeping the ball better. Because we scored the goals. We have three goals. It's not normal to lose a game when we score three goals like this. It's not normal to concede four goals like that.
On the team’s frustration…
Of course, we're really frustrated because we keep pushing hard all the time and every time we're down and we keep coming back. We have a lot of hope. We have a lot of energy after that. After we score a goal, we think we're coming back and boom, there's a goal (allowed) like this. I don't know if our mind is just going down a little bit. It's always hard to come back, especially after two goals difference. Then we come back to a one goal difference and then after little mistakes then we got to go back to two goals. Every time it's just hard. But I think we have just got to keep going and keep it up and I think it's going to come. We have just got to work harder in training and that's it.
On his assist…
Tonight especially, we were able to create a lot of different opportunities. We were really fluid. We knew where to move with a lot of runs behind the back. I think we were able to create all those opportunities. We have got to score more. I think we can even score more. We have got to keep this up for the next game and try to work sharper in defense.
On the coach’s confidence in him…
Of course, it always gives us confidence. It gives me personally confidence but I think I'm always confident about what I have got to do because we speak a lot during training during the week. Coach is always behind my back. He's telling me what I need to work on and I know what I have got to work on. I like the way he talks to me. I like the way he treats me. I feel like I'm really confident with the ball and I feel like I'm confident on the field and I'm confident in this team. I'm happy about the relationship I have with him.
