Sporting Kansas City are now on a three game losing streak, having been outscored 9-2 in that run. Two of those losses have come at Sporting Park, which has made a name of itself as ‘Blue Hell’ for visiting sides. Peter Vermes’s squad is in a very ill timed slump.
Many of their woes are a function of circumstance. Fatigue appears to have set in for some of Sporting’s biggest stars. Matt Besler and Graham Zusi played major roles in Brazil for the US and their recent play has left much to be desired. If they aren’t in individual slumps, they are clearly running on fumes in what has been a draining year for both players. As the backbone of a team that doesn’t have some of the needed supporting cast at the moment, more has been asked of them and they might not have as much to give. This is the time of the year in MLS when your core players need to be playing their best and leading.
Defending Champs on the Ropes but Sporting KC’s Problems Are Fixable
Injuries have hit Sporting as hard as any team still in the playoff hunt. Earlier in the season, they lost defenders Ike Opara and Chance Myers for the season. Myers was the regular starting right back and only played in seven games this year. With Besler missing time with the USMNT, Opara was the obvious first choice replacement for him off the bench. With recent knocks to Kronberg, Juliao, and Nagamura, a normally deep and ‘Sporting Fit’ roster is thinning out. Sporting has also been forced to spread the minutes among players with the group stage of the CONCACAF Champions League under way. While fatigue, injuries, and a recently compacted schedule have played a role, several alarming themes have come up as of late.
1. Scoring Imbalance: Dom Dwyer has 17 goals this season. The rest of Sporting’s roster has 20. We saw potential towards the end of last season for Dwyer and he kicked it up a notch in 2014. It became clear early in the season that Dwyer was going to be a beast and could be relied upon regularly to shoulder the scoring load. Speed, skill, flair, and his mental aspects of the game have improved. But I look at the rest of the KC attackers, and this year no one is afraid of them. Because the supporting cast has not played well, the starting lineup has been a rotation, and attacking substitutions have been frequent. Last year, Sporting had five players with four or more goals, and Claudio Bieler led the team with ten. After Dwyer, no player has more than three goals. This imbalance has led to a Di Vaio-Montreal or Torres-Chivas level of dependence on a single striker. For opponents it’s simple: target and shut down Dwyer and you shut down Sporting’s offense. Someone else needs to start scoring. Scoring balance would be preferred and has been a key for championship runs in MLS years past. I look at this roster however and don’t think it’s possible. One of the youngsters needs to step it up or Bieler needs to get out of Vermes’s dog house.
2. Dominating play but not getting results leads to frustrations: I don’t have fancy stats to quantify this one, but myself and other bloggers have started to notice this at Sporting Park. Much like Seattle, RSL, or LA, KC is one of those road trips most teams go to planning to bunker in defensively and play for the draw. While this is nothing new in soccer, this seems to have gotten on Sporting’s nerves this year when it hasn’t in the past. This has been more common this year than in the past, the last two home games against DC and Houston for example. Teams realized last year that Sporting is one of the big boys and should not be taken lightly. But for some reason, it infuriates Sporting to dominate possession and not be able to break teams down. Some of this has been because of the scoring imbalance. Their set pieces haven’t been as potent of late. And in their dissatisfaction, they throw numbers forward and have gotten burned on the counter. The other powerhouses in the league deal with this, but Sporting’s system is predicated on the high press, forcing turn overs, and getting on the run. When the visitors willingly concede possession and stay organized, it forces the hosts to create the narrative. With only one striker to focus on and a depleted supporting cast, it’s hard for them to get results. KC is having trouble handling being the King of the Mountain, something that was not fully realized until this year.
3. Key players are just not getting it done: Going off a point from the last paragraph, Sporting just hasn’t had the major contributions they’ve needed from their big guns. Zusi and Besler has been lackluster of late. I still don’t think Zusi had a great World Cu; if he wasn’t standing over a corner kick he wasn’t doing anything. and that form seems to have carried over. Besler does look fatigued, but he hasn’t had his usual cast around him and organizing the defense has been more cumbersome than in the past as captain. Benny Feilhaber has not been the tempo setter and dictator in the midfield he is capable of being. I think he has been better than Zusi and Besler at times lately, but he just hasn’t had that higher level that got him to South Africa and made him a major piece in last year’s MLS Cup run. Meanwhile, I still don’t know why Claudio Bieler is on this team. For the amount of playing time he gets, he’s an utter waste of a DP spot. It was pretty clear he was in the Vermes dog house last year. He’s been there all season. Either give him a chance since he is still a good player or get rid of him.
4. Transfer moves have left big holes: I wouldn’t call Sporting or MLS a selling team or league, respectively. KC has done a very good job of doing right by their players and moving them when they get a good and desirable opportunity. For the most part, they also only sell significant players when the money is too good to pass up. But in this, they’ve almost been pulling an Arsenal. Roger Espinoza was critical player for them and was sold to Wigan in 2012. It took almost a full year for them to fill that gap with a combination of Feilhaber and Uri Rosell. They loan and then transfer Kei Kamara to England, and there was again a delay in finding a replacement in Dwyer. A year after Rosell fills Espinoza’s spot, he transfers to Sporting CP.
One of the problems Sporting has had in their defensive breakdowns has been lack of support from the holding midfield position. Laurence Olum just hasn’t been good enough, and every other option Vermes has is young and inexperienced. Maybe Olum adjusts and grows into the role. Maybe one of the youngsters claims it. Neither of those appear likely for this season, and it’s a huge problem. Rosell covered ground and plugged up gaps. This allowed Zusi to be more aggressive going forward and complimented Feilhaber who is able to turn defensive clean ups and newly won possession into an attack. Without that play from Olum and company, the other midfield cogs are forced to change their roles away from their greatest strengths. This in turn negates some of the advantages of the 4-3-3 and Sporting’s system.
I don’t mean to criticize the transfers Sporting makes. Selling these players was probably a good move in the long run, but with no immediate replacement those transfers may have been poorly timed. Furthermore, they need to do something with that money they’ve received. I don’t think they’d be in their current conundrum if they still had Kamara or Rosell. They’d either have a forward as lethal if not more so than Dwyer to contribute to the attack or they’d have better support in the midfield.
With the transfer window closed, Vermes is going to have to find solutions to these absences somewhere on his depth chart. I respect this team too much to doubt that they’ll get their act together before the playoffs. The depth, star power, and well defined system are all in place. It does alarm me that several of their problems are under their control and have not been fixed yet: the key players need to step up, be leaders, and make those around them better. Someone besides Dwyer needs to score goals. They have to find ways to break down teams they are better than. They should not have lost to New England this week, and these dropped points cost clubs dearly come November. Never mind the confidence hit of falling deeper into Blue Hell.
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