Sporting Kansas City played a late one in Vancouver Sunday night, losing to Whitecaps

Three of the top four teams in the Western Conference of Major League Soccer dropped points on Saturday, setting up the perfect opportunity for Sporting Kansas City to capitalize against the Whitecaps Sunday night in Vancouver, British Colombia.

Instead, Sporting KC extended that stat to four-of-four with a 2-1 loss at BC Place. The Whitecaps (10-9-10) raced to a 2-0 lead with first-half goals by Ryan Gauld and Russell Teibert. Johnny Russell scored Sporting KC’s only goal just before halftime.

Kansas City didn’t put a shot on target in the second half. The Whitecaps employed a man-to-man defensive strategy, and Sporting KC failed to adequately counter.

“You can connect passes; that’s great,” Sporting KC coach Peter Vermes said. “But that doesn’t do anything. Possession doesn’t mean anything unless you have a purpose, and the purpose has to be to break through the other team.

“You have to create areas where you have numbers up and just too many times we didn’t do that over the course of the game.”

The loss stings for Sporting KC (15-7-7), which had the chance to creep within two points of the conference-leading Seattle Sounders (17-6-6) with a win. Sporting KC travels to Seattle next weekend as part of a high-intensity dash toward the end of the regular season.

Sunday’s game in Vancouver was never going to be an easy task.

Sporting KC fans could’ve been excused for feeling some sense of security heading into the game — their team had won three straight at BC Place, after all, and the Whitecaps haven’t made the playoffs since 2017.

Heck, at one point this season they were mired at the bottom of the West. As a general rule the past couple of years, Vancouver hasn’t been a very good soccer team.

But the second half of 2021 has seen a revitalized Whitecaps side, and a big part of that has been the team’s return to Canada.

Vancouver spent more than a year away from its true home at BC Place due to travel restrictions wrought by COVID-19. The Whitecaps were not allowed to travel to and from Canada for MLS games on a regular basis. So they set up camp in Salt Lake City, essentially playing “home” games on the road.

Since returning to BC Place on Aug. 21, and now counting Sunday’s outcome, they’re 6-1-0 at home and rank first in MLS points (18) and goal differential (+16) in that span.

And even in front of a 50% capacity crowd, the Whitecaps made their home advantage count in the first half of Sunday’s game despite controlling just 38% of possession.

Gauld opened the scoring in the 23rd minute from close range. Teammate Brian White put the ball on a platter via a header after a cross to Sporting’s back post.

Teibert doubled the lead 13 minutes later after sending a peach of a half-volley from 25 yards off the inside of the right post and into Sporting’s net.

“Two really easy situations,” Vermes said. “The second one was just a lack of stepping out and pressuring the ball. There’s no way that we should give a shot away like that from that distance when we have three guys standing there.”

Russell recorded his 11th goal of the season in the 43rd minute after curling into the corner a shot from the edge of the box.

Despite the negative overall result Sunday evening, Russell’s goal was notable in that he became the first player in Sporting KC history to score in six straight games. And an assist on the goal extended Daniel Salloi’s league-best goal contributions mark to 24.

But as is ever the attitude with the Sporting KC captain, Russell didn’t have too many thoughts about his accomplishment considering the result.

“It’s nice to help out with goals, that’s my job,” Russell said. “But at the end of the day, us as a whole is more important than me scoring goals.”

Sporting controlled possession in the second half but was unable to create any dangerous chances. Sporting’s two shots inside the Whitecaps’ box both came on speculative headers, by Andreu Fontas and Luis Martins.

Sporting KC returns to action Saturday against the Sounders in a 2:30 p.m. road game. But first, on Wednesday night, Seattle plays the third-place Colorado Rapids, who sit one point behind Sporting KC.

This story was originally published October 17, 2021 at 11:04 PM with the headline "Sporting Kansas City played a late one in Vancouver Sunday night, losing to Whitecaps."