SPORTING KANSAS CITY MANAGER PETER VERMES
On his thoughts of the game…
“You’re going to expect that a team is going to push like that at the end of the game and go for the win like they did. I’m not saying that we should give up two goals by any means, but I will tell you that we should’ve scored four or five goals. It just puts the pressure on the team. As much as I think that we’ve given up a bunch of bad goals this season, I think that the biggest thing is that we’ve had a ton of chances in a lot of games where we could be up, and we’ve just shot ourselves in the foot. When you miss those chances, you play differently. When you’re up 1-0 or 2-0, it’s a different game from the other team.
"We’ve done that way too many times this season, and then late giving up the goals like we have, then you lose confidence in trying to close out a game. The bottom line is we’ve had more than enough chances to close the game out tonight, and we didn’t, and that’s been the story of this season. No doubt we’ve given up a lot of silly goals, but there have been a lot of chances where we haven’t scored, and that’s put a lot of pressure on the team. As far as play and the way we played in the game and chances, all of that’s good, but that doesn’t get you the three points that it should. I think it’s a big lesson from the season, because it’s not like we’ve only had one game where we’ve missed too many chances, it’s been far too many games this season. To me, that’s the difference.”
On how well the defense held up tonight for the first 70 minutes…
“The defense was great, don’t get me wrong. That’s why I said overall we were fantastic. We really were. I mean defensively, we were tremendous. They have a very potent team going forward. When you don’t score like that when you’re playing away from home, you can pull those games out and win 1-0, because the other team just can’t find it, but in this situation we gave up way too many opportunities by not scoring the ones we created. That’s where the difference in the game was.”
On being eliminated from playoff contention as coach…
“It’s a failure. It’s a complete disappointment. It’s not a place that we ever want to be, and all of us have a lot of assessing to do, a lot of evaluation, and a lot of different things. We’ve still got two games left, so we’ll deal with the rest of the stuff when the season’s over, but very disappointing. I have a lot of real, definitive thoughts about our games this year, what we did and didn’t do. We gave up a lot of silly goals this season and we also missed a lot of expected goals on some really great chances. We just haven’t put the ball away. It’s a far cry from last year having scored the most goals ever in the club’s history, and that’s not something to be proud of by any means. You can’t go from the best to not scoring any. That’s not good as a team, so that’s an area we’re really going to have to improve in.”
On losing late to Minnesota…
“It’d say it was unfortunate, but it’s been a big part of our season this year. We’ve given up a lot of goals here and there, but we’ve had a lot of chances and we had a lot of chances in this game, and for us to only score one goal puts a lot of pressure on our team defensively. Honestly we should’ve scored another two or three easily and we didn’t, and that’s why we suffered. We have to score those goals."
SPORTING KANSAS CITY MIDFIELDER ROGER ESPINOZA
On the feelings of giving up the late winner to Minnesota…
“This sucks because it’s been the same story all year. I thought we played an unbelievable game, we had our share of opportunities, and we didn’t finish them, and that takes a lot from our defense at the end of the day. They got one opportunity, it ricocheted off of some people, and it ended up going in, and that’s just been the story of the season for us. We play a great game, but we don’t have the product at the end.”
On being eliminated from playoff contention for the first time in eight years…
“We gotta keep working hard, we gotta bring the team together. There’s still two games left to play. I know we’re out of the playoffs, but at the end of the day we gotta play for our jobs and we gotta play for the club and get prepared for next season. We need to just let this season go away. We’re a great team and we just need to get better next year."
