On the eve of Western Conference Championship Leg Two at Children’s Mercy Park, Sporting Kansas City Manager Peter Vermes joined Soren Petro on Sports Radio 810 WHB to preview his team’s monumental matchup with the Portland Timbers.
Thursday’s showdown will kick off at 8:30 p.m. CT, airing live on ESPN and Sports Radio 810 WHB, with a limited number of tickets still available at SeatGeek.com. The winner will advance to MLS Cup 2018 on Saturday, Dec. 8.
Sporting KC navigated a tricky first leg of the conference championship series on Sunday, settling for a scoreless draw at Providence Park in Portland. The result gave Sporting KC their ninth shutout in 12 MLS meetings against the Timbers, but Vermes remains wary of the threat Portland brings away from home.
Led by head coach Giovanni Savarese, the Timbers ousted FC Dallas on the road in the Knockout Round and outlasted Seattle Sounders FC over two legs in the conference semifinals. To complicate matters for Sporting KC, a score-draw of any kind on Thursday (1-1, 2-2, 3-3, etc.) would see Portland advance on the away goals tiebreaker.
“It’s going to be a battle tomorrow night,” Vermes told Petro during Wednesday afternoon’s discussion. “Portland has a lot of confidence right now, and they have some guys who are real game changers. Guys like (Diego) Valeri and (Sebastian) Blanco are excellent players who have come up in big moments, and those are the things we’re going to have to be very attentive to for 90-plus minutes. They can change the outcome of the game with one play.”
Regardless of the circumstances, Vermes and Sporting KC intend to stick to a formula that has yielded one of the best regular seasons in club history. The side has set single-season records for goals, assists and shots while remaining one of the league’s best defensive outfits, and Vermes insists that in order to win, Sporting KC simply have to embody what they have all year long.
“We have to be who we are,” he said. “That’s what has gotten us to this point. We have to play to our model of play and see where it goes.”
Listen to the full podcast below.
