Sporting KC
Late equalizer spoils home opener for Sporting KC
An inexplicable call from the (replacement) refs gave the Union a chance in the dying moments, and they took it.
The Sporting KC defense held the Union to just one shot on goal through the first 95 minutes on Saturday night. But that second one in the 96th minute off the head of Alejandro Bedoya spoiled the party at the home opener.
Children’s Mercy Park unveiled a whole new atmosphere to kick off the new season. The new screens look fantastic, and the new lights brought more life to the pregame festivities.
The home side clearly felt that lift. They were threatening right from the start, getting into the box multiple times in the first five minutes. Johnny Russell nearly opened the scoring himself in the 3rd minute, but actually missed a pass to Alan Pulido for a sitter.
Remi Walter eventually got things going with a lovely curler, kissing it off the far post for effect. Jake Davis was credited with an assist, but his pass only got through because Jose Martinez injured himself on the play.
19' | Cool as you like. A 16-pass buildup leads to Remi Walter's pinpoint strike from outside the box!
Tune in now for free on @AppleTV: https://t.co/AOsLaCEmgB
1-0 | #SKCvPHI pic.twitter.com/NJFAgkaN82
— Sporting Kansas City (@SportingKC) March 3, 2024
Martinez stayed in the match after receiving treatment for a while. Perhaps a hurt ego, more than anything.
SKC almost went into the half with a two goal lead. As we hit stoppage time, Philadelphia keeper Oliver Semmle saved a bullet of a strike from Salloi. The rebound fell to Russell, but his effort went just wide.
Bedoya, now 36, came off the bench at halftime and was almost instantly booked. He got Walter with a studs up tackle, which left the SKC man on the ground for several minutes. Somehow, Bedoya avoided seeing red.
That decision would prove to be vital.
(Replacement) Referee Rafael Bonilla began to lose control in the second half after several questionable – or just flat out wrong – decisions. Players on both sides were getting heated and challenges were coming with more bite.
Just before the Union’s equalizer, the assistant referee inexplicably awarded a throw-in to Philadelphia. Only a few seconds later they won a corner kick. Tim Melia attempted to punch it away, but it fell for Bedoya to smash it home and steal the result from KC.
NEVER GIVE UP!@AleBedoya17 sends it home in the final chance of the night to tie it up 🫡#SKCvPHI | #DOOP | 1-1 pic.twitter.com/iOja7Tl8xx
— Philadelphia Union (@PhilaUnion) March 3, 2024
The crowd, the players, and Peter Vermes were quite vocal with their displeasure after the match.
Vermes goes straight to the refs after the game. Game changing call… #SportingKC #SKCvPHI pic.twitter.com/8eDBbqdwwO
— Chad Smith (@PlayFor90) March 3, 2024
It’s a really frustrating ending to a gorgeous night in KC. That single point will be hard to swallow, but the defensive core can be proud of their performance in the first two matches of the season.
Next Saturday we are headed to Los Angeles to take on Denis Bouanga and LAFC, who were thrashed 3-0 by RSL this week.
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Bad call aside, 4 points already lost over the course of 2 games. It should have been our throw in and the game should have ended, but it didn’t, and we gave up the goal.
It’s early in the season – we just started – but we’ve said this every year for the past few years, so maybe there’s a theme….
The start of this year, and last year, don’t feel anywhere near the same thing.
If they don’t blow that objectively bad call then we would have started the season unbeaten, only conceded one goal in two matches, and be perfectly fine.
Really shitty result and they should have defended better on that one single play after 95mins of solid defending… but it doesn’t make me think they’ll go winless in ten straight matches.
They’re the same in that we have to keep saying “if this hadn’t happened” or “it’s still early. There’s always something.
The starts do not feel the same but there is a definite rhyming scheme going on.
Bad calls are out of the players control and good teams just play better as a counter. Complain about the play, it is what PV and the team can control.
95 minutes of solid defending is great but so is regularly scoring more than one goal in a game. SKC could have negated both the bad referees and the late equalizers.
I’m not one who usually likes to throw out the “f” word, but that’s game felt more like a fix job than any game of KCs I’ve ever watched. They were determined to keep Philly in the game and I truly believe they would’ve kept the game going until Philly scored. It was so blatantly called for Philadelphia at so many points in the game, and they wouldn’t even TALK to our players.
Yes, SKC should’ve put it away yada yada yada but scoring fair goals in soccer is one of the hardest things to do and when the referees apply the rules in a way that seems to blatantly harm one team that’s even more difficult
Let me start by saying if the refs make that call and give the throw in SKC’s way, the game is over, no surprise there. But i’m just as frustrated with the way Sporting couldn’t just finish off that game with seconds to go:
All that being said, the refs did snatch two points away from SKC with multiple mistakes in the dying seconds. Yet, we have to somehow be a smarter, tougher team in those moments if we are going to win games like this one.
I don’t think they’d have VAR’d a throw in.
this SKC team played their best XI against a heavily rotated Philly side and couldn’t dominate. That’s a problem.
This.
The team doesn’t have what they had in years past where if they were playing a depleted team, it was obvious they were playing a depleted team. Now, we give every team a solid chance, no matter their roster condition
I agree they should’ve dominated (and that its a problem), but they didn’t. This is sometimes how games go though, sometimes you don’t dominate games you should, but you have to find a way to win the games you don’t dominate. Also, regardless of the review or not, in that area of the pitch with seconds to go, it makes sense to foul and force them into a long and likely unsuccessful free kick rather than a far more dangerous corner kick.
I was very surprised to see some MLS pundits so high on SKC this year. We lost key players and brought almost no one in to shore up the holes left by them. This game, and the Houston one, are perfect examples of why I’m concerned.
XG isn’t everything, but ours has been very very low to start. We’re only two games in, so I’m not going to freak out, but our only two goals have come from pretty low percentage opportunities. The refs blew it for us, no doubt about it, but our offense has to be producing more so that we’re not in a situation like that where the refs could change the whole game. We had multiple opportunities to score that we blew as well and those have to be finished off. For now, it’s the start of the season and we’re still shaking off the rust. But if this continues for another 3-5 games, it will start to show just what kind of team we have this year.
Two depleted teams, two ties. This is different than last year. No significant additions to the team. Usually PV adds a player within two weeks of the season starting, so he can blame the first ten weeks on player x not gelling with the team. Two midfielder goals on heads up plays by Tommy and Walter respectively. Where is the attack? Why are Russell, Salloi, and Pulido still the starting front line? What do they do to stay in those spots? Do they really practice in preseason, or just conditioning?
It’s the same terrible PV product. Ultimately SKC makes the playoffs and the front office resigns PV to a lifetime contract. At this point I’m convinced he has compromising Intel on skc ownership in a vault.
I feel like I might get jumped on by the trolls, but SKC did dominate this game against the backups. The possession numbers, and the eye test had them doing what they wanted through the first half. They just didn’t finish their chances, or see the correct final pass. Johnny’s shot 3 min in, the offsides goal, the wrong pass from Pulido on a break Johnny missing the rebound right before half.
Philly put on their better players in the 2nd half, and the game became much more even. Even after their best players came on, Sporting mostly continued to control the game, until desperation time. Anyone watch the Columbus/Minnesota game? Same thing happened there. If after every game that doesn’t go perfect you are ready to crap on the team, and fire the coach, why are you even watching. This is supposed to be fun. MLS is a salary cap league. rosters aren’t perfect. This looks like a team that will be competitive, but not perfect. That means there will be some games like this. SKC also might be able to smash and grab in games where they don’t play as well as the other team (like at Minnesota last season). If one call goes the correct way, we’d be talking about how long it had been since there was a 1-0 win, and maybe the defence was putting it together this year.
I think, Steve, the problem a lot of us long-timers have is that this exact script plays out the same year after year. You’re right that these kinds of things will happen in a salary capped league but that stops being comforting at a certain point. I very much hope I am wrong, but I think this is probably a bad team. The two draws featured our best 11 against rotated squads that we didn’t look that great against. Usually we spend the first half of the season saying, “Wait until our best 11 is healthy.” Well they are right now and I doubt anyone is worried. Then again, I thought Philly would stomp a mud hole in SKC so maybe “should-have-won” is impressive.
I think I’m coming down somewhere around Steve.
With the salary budget, parity is built into MLS.
SKC against Philly was miles better than SKC against Houston a week before. There were several bad choices made in the attack that kills some good efforts. Pass when you should shoot, shoot when you should pass, etc. I think they’ll continue getting better, but I do worry they ‘blew’ chances against weakened opponents. LAFC aren’t in CCC, and they are hosting. They are integrating a lot of new pieces, but it’s tough on the road in MLS. If they can win that game against a team surely set to be a contender again, that would silence some of the doubt I’d think.
Philly having a rotated squad means they are far closer as a team to being in form than SKC are. They’ve played 2x as many competitive games and that is actually an advantage instead of a detriment this early in the season.
also, Bedoya sucks.
Watching this game, one question kept popping into my head. Why doesn’t SKC play through Pulido more often on attack? Salloi, Russell and Pulido look disconnected. The rest of the team looked like they had good chemistry. Interestingly, the front three seemed to have good chemistry with the rest of the team, just not each other. So odd for a front three that have been together so long.
In answer to my own question, it is really hard to play through the middle when every attack goes up the wings, back to the FB, between the CBs, up the other side and repeat.
On a side note, Jim Curtain was giving PV a run for his best dressed money last night! 🙂
I felt like Pulido was losing the ball way too often when it would come to him. He didn’t look sharp. Perhaps the least in form player on the pitch. Shame his goal didn’t count, maybe that would have got his confidence up.
Can we also talk about the 3 or 4 times we had 3v2s in our attack and we passed the ball out wide to the left. It slowed the attack too much, rather than pass to a direct runner on the right hand side?
Our attack really struggle making smart decisions.
I don’t accept using a call a full minute before the goal, with the entire team back to defend a set piece, as justification for blowing the game.
It was atrocious set piece defending. No more. No less. From Melia, from the players at the near post who left Bedoya unmarked. And it wasn’t the first time neither centerback knew who they were marking in that 2nd half. For a pairing that played most of last season together, Fontas and Rosero still spend too much time acting like they just met.
This wasn’t about the refs. This was their own screw-up. Again.
And if SKC can’t take 3 points from 2 different teams willing to write off the game before it starts? bad news.
Also: Should we talk about the complete lack of goal-dangerous chances we’ve seen in 2 games? 25yard shots are not going to win many matches. And if you can’t keep a clean sheet, you have to score 2 to win. This team has barely looked likely to score 1.
For the “how come we couldnt beat the rotated squad” squad: We did dominate against the rotated squad.
We completely overwhelmed them in the first half. We put three balls in the net in the first 20 minutes. That was showing intent and hunger if not perfect execution since only one of them counted. At half time we were now playing against a fresher, closer to starting 11, and at 60′ we were playing against their very fresh, full starting 11. They stole goal a minute past when the game was supposed to end. It absolutely sucks that we let that goal in, but we outplayed them all 90 minutes, even after the rest of their starters came in.
When we played Houston it wasnt their first competitive game of the season, Philly has now already played 4. Point being, reps matter and KC showed huge improvement over their flat and lifeless performance against Houston. There were worrying signs of disjointedness and missed opportunities in this game, but it was still just the second game. The improvement in passing and composure (i dont have numbers for it, but just from my eye) was markedly better Saturday vs last week. The biggest worry is how downright bad Pulido has looked with the ball both of these games, but even with him you kinda expect him to figure it out. And if he doesnt…. Big Willy is right there ready to be the man.
TLDR – The sky is not falling yet, but there are places in the roof we should be looking to patch.