A frustrating Sunday afternoon in Children’s Mercy Park saw Sporting Kansas City fall to the Portland Timbers 4-2 in a match that was plagued by all too familiar defensive mistakes and lapses in concentration.  Interim head coach Kerry Zavagnin tried to warn us in his press availability earlier in the week that this team would still lose games at times and while there was certainly continued progress in chance creation offensively, some familiar problems defending restarts came back to bite them and put them in an increasingly difficult, and ultimately insurmountable hole to climb out of.

On a positive note, it was perhaps the best game we’ve seen yet from Shapi Suleymanov, scoring a goal, also earning two yellow cards and a PK, and generally giving Portland’s left side all kinds of problems.  And yet he was removed from the game after 55 minutes in an attempt to bring fresh bodies to attempt to press Portland even further that was unfortunately fairly ineffective.  

This was one of several choices Kerry Zavagnin made in this game that were certainly different than we are used to seeing from his predecessor, and certainly showed a willingness to try things and recognize that a 4-2 loss and a 7-2 loss count the same in the standings.  That said, it also reminded us that not all change is necessarily good, and it did seem to limit the effectiveness of the attack for a significant period of the 2nd half.  We’ll dive into game #2 of the Kerry Experience this week and discuss what changes we see, and what we liked and didn’t like about the decisions he made.

Finally, Mike Illig sat down with Sam McDowell of the KC Star and offered some illuminating perspective on where he’d like to see this team go in the future, the Great Kevin de Bruyne Bake Off has begun as 4 MLS teams are now vying for his services, and a trialist appears at Sporting KC practice this week.

Music by The Spin Wires