KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Calling Peter Vermes “tight-lipped” might be one of the bigger understatements around MLS – and the way Sporting Kansas City's manager and technical director is handling his team's run of frustrating results is no exception.
Maybe he has plans for a wholesale shuffling of formation and personnel for Friday's home match against D.C. United (6 pm CT, 38 the Spot, UniMás), with Sporting stuck in a run of one win in their last nine outings after winning four of their first five. Then again, maybe he'll stick with his trademark 4-3-3 high press, and the players he has entrusted to execute it.
Either way, Vermes isn't saying. He hasn't laid his plans out before, and he isn't about to start now. This is, after all, a manager who won't reveal any of his starters until an hour before kickoff. But after 15-plus years in the professional ranks, first as a player and then a coach and technical director, he's seen all sorts of approaches to getting a side out of a lull, and won't rule any of them out.
“I would say that I've been through every single situation that you probably could throw out there,” he told reporters after Tuesday's training session. “There's no quick solution to anything, and at the same time, sometimes things can change overnight. So it depends on the team. It depends on a lot of different things.”
One regular that Vermes will certainly not be able to count on is midfielder Roger Espinoza, who on Thursday was handed a one-game suspension by the MLS Disciplinary Committee.
Regardless of who’s on the field, for Sporting, Vermes said – as he has so many times in recent weeks – that the thing upon which everything else hangs is better care of the ball, especially in dangerous areas of the field.
“As I've said before, the thing you can't do is you can't give up soft goals,” Vermes said. “That's the piece that we've done. When you do that, you're always chasing games. And until that piece gets right, it's going to be hard to get results, because we're going to be expected to outscore the other team every time in coming back from behind. It has a lot to do with not giving up soft goals.”
That has been a common thread of late, most recently in Sporting's 3-1 home loss to Real Salt Lake last weekend. Sporting played with good energy and possession, but giveaways by two veterans – center back Matt Besler and playmaking midfielder Benny Feilhaber – both led to goals for the visitors.
“We play a certain way,” Vermes said on Tuesday. “As long as we play a certain way, with the intensity that we should, and we minimize our mistakes, then everything's fine. But we've made mistakes that have cost us goals, and that's what we have to cut out.”
Steve Brisendine covers Sporting Kansas City for MLSsoccer.com.
