Road warriors seek answers as Caps lose
Kansas City dominates matchup, handing `overwhelmed' Vancouver a second-straight loss
Two teams boasting 2-1-2 records went into Sunday's game at Children's Mercy Park in Kansas City looking to rebound from tough 1-0 road losses.
But one of these teams was not like the other.
Sporting Kansas City dominated the Major League Soccer matchup from whistle to whistle, handing the Vancouver Whitecaps their second-straight loss with a convincing 3-0 decision.
Alan Pulido, with two, and Dániel Sallói scored for Kansas City (3-1-1). The Whitecaps (2-2-1) will try to stop the bleeding next Saturday in Houston, their last game until June 18.
“We looked overwhelmed in the first 25 minutes,” said coach Marc Dos Santos.
“We struggled, they came out at us in waves, and it made it very difficult for us. And when we won the ball, we weren't able to get out of pressure.
“But I think that overall, we played a team that was better than us tonight, a team that deserves the three points. Now we have to react and get out of this game, learn from this game, and not throw away everything we did until this (point) and try to see what we could do now to get to a next step.”
Here's what we learned ...
IT'S SKCARNAGE
The Whitecaps haven't beaten KC since September of 2017, when they won 1-0 on the back of a 53rd minute Erik Hurtago goal.
Since then, Sporting has gone 5-0-1, outscoring the Whitecaps 20-3.
Whitecaps coach Marc Dos Santos tied KC 1-1 in his first game against the club where he worked under Peter Vermes, but has gone 0-2 since then.
OPEN (AND SHUT) PLAY
Once again, Vancouver failed to score from open play, coming into the game ranking second-last in MLS with 5.8 chances created per game.
It was tough to generate offence when KC had the ball all the time — their possession was as high as 78 per cent in the first half, before finishing with 67 per cent — with Sporting pinning the Caps deep in their third for most of the game.
Cristian Dajome had a glorious chance to get the Caps on the board, with an errant Sporting pass finding him alone at the KC penalty spot, but he put his second touch high over the crossbar.
“It's not a good feeling to come out of here without any
points. They came at us in the first 30 minutes, we suffered, we saw it,” said goalkeeper Max Crepeau. “The second half we came short, physically, with the ball. I don't want to go too into details into the comments, but we got outplayed today. There were some good moments for us, but overall, the 90, we came (up) short today.”
Vancouver finished with an xG of 0.7; their pre-game tally of 0.76 non-penalty expected goals is second-lowest in the league.
Sporting outshot the Caps 27-9, 7-2 on goal. The tally could have been much higher — their xG was 3.7 — but Max Crepeau made several big point-blank saves to keep his team in shouting distance.
“I think that there's something we need more to create more opportunities,” said Dos Santos. “We have to find solutions right now with what we have here to generate more. The good thing is that there are actions that we create, when we get into spots, we created enough to score some goals. We just need to become calmer, better in front of goal.”
FRESH LEGS
The starting lineup saw three changes from the Caps' mid-week loss to Minnesota.
Russell Teibert and Andy Rose were replaced by Derek Cornelius and Ryan Raposo in the starting 11, as Dos Santos tried to juggle injuries and workload with the team playing its third game in nine days.
But Raposo didn't last long in his first start of 2021, making way for Michael Baldisimo at the 36th minute mark, as Dos Santos tried to adjust to SKC's domination in the middle and the home side up 2-0.
Rose missed the game with an adductor strain, but centreback Erik Godoy did see some action for the first time this season, after being held out with a calf strain. Theo Bair also made his season debut, but Cavallini has played every minute so far this season for Vancouver. Javain Brown made his first appearance as a Whitecap, and Kam Habibullah also got in the game
“No, I don't want to give that excuse,” Dos Santos said in response to being questioned if his team was fatigued.
“If you saw the starting lineup with Kansas City, there was a lot of the same players that played in the last game. We were forced to do some (subs) due to injuries. We don't have the luxury just to play the best teams in our division with guys missing.”