Sporting Kansas City loses opener at Portland after conceding early goal to Timbers
Sporting Kansas City kicked off its 2023 Major League Soccer season with a 1-0 loss at the Portland Timbers on a cold and rainy Monday evening in Oregon.
Things got ugly for Sporting inside the first 10 minutes when Portland scored the match’s only goal. KC defender Ben Sweat tried to keep the ball in play along the goal line but gave it away and then failed to track back to hold Santiago Mosquera onside.
Mosquera received a pass in behind Sporting’s backline and kept his shot low and hard past KC goalkeeper John Pulskamp.
Should Sweat have let the ball go out for a corner or cleared it out of bounds?
“I’d agree with both of (those) solutions,” Sporting KC manager Peter Vermes said.
Sporting turned it on from there and looked much better, Remi Walter and Erik Thommy in the midfield, especially. Thommy came closest to scoring for Sporting, but David Bingham made two great saves for the Timbers.
“The effort, the desire, the passion was there in the game, other than the mistake on the first goal,” Vermes said. “But outside of that, the team played well, all the subs came on and were energetic and had an impact (on the match) for sure.”
Sporting kept the heat on the Timbers’ back line but never found the net. Daniel Salloi, Willy Agada and Roger Espinoza had great chances they couldn’t convert.
“We were all over their goal, all over them,” Vermes said. “And unfortunately we couldn’t put one in.”
The changes themselves weren’t clear-cut. Agada’s late header that went wide was Sporting’s best chance of the half, and maybe the match, aside of Thommy’s first-half shots. Vermes lamented that, at times, his players were too hesitant to put the ball in the box, instead trying to pick apart the Timbers’ defense.
With it being their first match of the season, Sporting KC is still getting the final movements and timings down in their attack. It’s usually one of the last pieces to come together for a team. But Salloi didn’t want to use that as an excuse.
“I thought we had our chances, and we could have easily put one away,” he said. “It’s soccer. If you’re not gonna score, then you can’t hope for the other team to make mistakes and miss their chances, too.”
Sporting KC was without Nemanja Radoja, Tim Melia, and Alan Pulido. Johnny Russell and Gadi Kinda were also known and expected absences for the first match.
Both Tim Melia and Nemanja Radoja missed a couple of weeks of the preseason with injuries, and Vermes didn’t want to risk them — or Pulido — in a cold, wet match on artificial turf.
“I want to make sure that the guys who are in the team and ready to play are not wounded, or more importantly, they’re not in a place where they’re not fit enough,” Vermes said. “They’re not going to be in the team until they are.”
Originally scheduled for Saturday night, the match at Providence Park was shifted to Monday due to winter weather in the Portland area.
Sporting KC (0-1) next plays at the Colorado Rapids on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. Central before coming home for the club’s first game of the season at Children’s Mercy Park.
Sporting KC’s home opener against the L.A. Galaxy is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 11.
This story was originally published February 27, 2023 at 11:01 PM.