For 45 minutes, Sporting Kansas City held on to hope in Los Angeles, the demons of a difficult stretch lurking in the background as the visitors headed to halftime with a result squarely in sight.
In the end, though, all it took was 30 seconds for those demons to surface, allowing the Galaxy to run away with it’s first victory against Sporting in the side’s last six meetings and sending Kansas City back to the drawing board after yet another disappointing defeat.
Sean Franklin found Landon Donovan from an innocuous throw in and Donovan did the rest, carving up a sleeping Sporting defense and combining with Chad Barrett to put the Galaxy up for good and making Vermes’ halftime message to his side a moot point.
“We talked about it at halftime,” Vermes said. “About being ready and prepared to play and getting going. Again, a critical mistake put the dagger in us at that point.”
It’s a feeling that is getting all too familiar for Kansas City. For the fourth-consecutive game, Sporting walked away with nothing to show for their travels, losing 4-1 to a Los Angeles Galaxy side that didn’t pass up any opportunities to punish the visitors for their mistakes.
With seven games of their season-opening road trip in the books, Kansas City (1-5-1) is last in the Eastern Conference on four points and has yet to register a shut out. Even more frustrating is the way Sporting has dropped result after result through largely preventable errors.
And against Los Angeles it was simply more of the same.
Despite dominating possession and enjoying the majority of the game’s early chances, the Galaxy found themselves down 1-0 following an Omar Gonzalez own goal. But just as fortune finally seemed to be turning Sporting’s way, Roger Espinoza hacked down David Beckham with a rash challenge in the penalty area, allowing Donovan to even the score from the spot and shifting the momentum for good.
And once Donovan scored his second just after halftime – his seventh goal in five games – Kansas City found themselves with nowhere to go but down, conceding twice more after failing to heed their manager’s halftime warning.
“It’s very disappointing,” Vermes said. “We all know what we had to do when we came out of halftime. We all knew. To have that loss of concentration is a tough thing.”
Even tougher was watching Juan Pablo Angel slip past Sporting’s flat-footed defenders to score the third goal followed by a vintage David Beckham free kick in the final minutes that was icing on the cake for a Galaxy side currently perched at the top of the Western Conference.
And although Sporting managed 11 shots to Los Angeles’ 13 and kept the game close through 45 minutes, Galaxy goalkeeper Josh Saunders found himself forced into action by only three of those attempts while Eric Kronberg, making his first start this season and just second in his career, was peppered with 10 shots on frame and was lucky not to concede more to a rampant Los Angeles side.
All told, Kronberg made a few good saves and showed well in difficult circumstances, but neither he nor normal starter Jimmy Nielsen, who was given the night off, could have done anything to keep Los Angeles from their four goals.
“It was nothing against Jimmy (Nielsen) at all,” Vermes said of the decision to play his seldom-used backup. “I think Jimmy has been playing well. It was time for us to give (Kronberg) a game.”
And despite all his waiting for just such an opportunity, Kronberg may have been content to watch from a distance had he known what was in store. After an admirable overall performance against New York two weeks ago, it was back to shambles for Sporting as the back line looked unorganized and slow to react and the attack lacked imagination and cohesion.
Most disappointingly, Kansas City shot themselves in the foot when it mattered most, leaving a mountain to climb in order to get within shouting distance of the rest of the league.
“A loss is a loss,” Vermes said. “It’s the key moments that I’m frustrated about.”
