KANSAS CITY, Mo. – For the better part of 18 games this season, the inability to finish was the Wizards’ Achilles heel. And not much changed Saturday night in San Jose.
Kansas City squandered chance after chance while San Jose’s Chris Wondolowski took advantage of a brilliant pass from recent addition Khari Stephenson to take all three points with a 1-0 victory at Buck Shaw Stadium.
The loss is a disappointing end to the Wizard’s four-game unbeaten streak, especially considering the sheer number of gilt-edged opportunities that went unfinished.
“We created more than enough chances to win this game tonight,” manager Peter Vermes said after the game. “To walk out of here with nothing is very disappointing. We gave up a big opportunity tonight.”
For the first 15 minutes, it looked like Kansas City was well on their way to a third-consecutive result on the road. But, in the end, it just wasn’t meant to be.
Alone against Joe Cannon on multiple occasions, Teal Bunbury’s attempts were smothered by the veteran goalkeeper. Ryan Smith and Kei Kamara bore down on goal to no avail, and two Davy Arnaud goals were called back for offsides.
Vermes said he couldn’t comment on the validity of the calls by the assistant referee when it came to Arnaud’s disallowed headers, but he was certain about one thing: lack of quality in the penalty area was simply too much to overcome. The Wizards’ lack of scoring now puts them second from the bottom in the league in goals scored, with just 15 in 19 games.
“You don’t get that many clear opportunities in one game, and we had them. We have to score,” underlined Vermes.
Similarly, San Jose suffered from the same impotency in front of net for the first 35 minutes before a moment of pure class by Stephenson freed Wondolowski to slide a simple volley past a helpless Jimmy Nielsen.
Stephenson, who played for the Wizards in 2004, fought off a defender before delivering a delicate chip that found the Earthquakes leading scorer in stride at the top of the six-yard box.
“We had pressure on the ball, but he had too much time to be able to pick a guy out,” Vermes said. “He played a very good ball, and [Wondolowski] finished it.”
While San Jose won for the first time at home since May 8 to gain ground in their fight to get back in the postseason conversation, Kansas City fell even further behind.
The Wizards are now stuck on 20 points with just 11 regular season games remaining. And with time quickly running out, Kansas City have no choice but to adopt a must-win mentality from this point on or risk missing out on the playoffs for a second-consecutive year.
“We’ve been at that point for awhile,” Vermes said. “You’ve got to win games. Not getting a result here is not a good thing. This was a playoff game, we needed to get it done and we didn’t.”
