Held scoreless at home, Sporting Kansas City come up short against Chicago Fire

After earning a midweek tie against the L.A. Galaxy, Sporting Kansas City bookended that road point with another home loss.

Sporting KC could not find the back of the net Saturday night at Children’s Mercy Park, falling 1-0 to the Chicago Fire.

Chicago’s Fabian Herbers scored the match’s only goal in the 47th minute.

It was the third game in a week for Sporting KC (5-10-6). And with Saturday’s high temperatures, this one assumed the look and feel of two teams playing on tired legs.

“You have to be able to mentally fight through that piece,” Sporting KC manager Peter Vermes said. “Whether you’re playing a midweek game or not, it’s gonna be hot, and you have to manage the game, you have to be good with the ball.”

That goal — being good with the ball — was a point of frustration for Vermes after Saturday’s match. He lamented how impatient his players were, trying to “do everything in two and three passes.”

A couple of times during the first half, Sporting KC was willing to give up possession in the final third for a shot from 35-40 yards out.

“You’re not scoring from there,” Vermes said. “When you do, it’s one out of a hundred.”

The opening half was relatively uneventful, but Chicago scored just 90 seconds after the restart. A cross deflected off the back of Andreu Fontas’ foot, settling at the top of the box for Herbers to smash home.

Both Vermes and Sporting KC captain Johnny Russell acknowledged the team prioritized coming out of halftime better than they had in their previous two matches.

But the point of that conversation didn’t seem to take hold.

“It’s just frustration all around,” Russell said. “(There are) things we speak about, things that we work on, and then we switch off, and we don’t do it as a team on the field.”

As the clock ticked on toward 90 minutes, Sporting KC looked tired and out of ideas. One of the home team’s last best chances came on a free kick that Alan Pulido sent over the crossbar during second-half stoppage time.

The frustration of Saturday’s result includes a cumulative effect. After doing so well to climb back into playoff contention, Sporting have for three matches now failed to maintain that pace.

KC got nothing out of two home games. And currently, Sporting sit four points out of a playoff spot with more games played than anyone else in the league.

“We left ourselves a mountain to climb from our start to the season,” Russel said. “We managed to claw into contention, and in the last week, we’ve slipped back. ...

“Losing back-to-back home games is not acceptable for us at any point in the season, but especially in the situation we find ourselves in.”

Sporting’s next match is at home on Saturday, July 1, against the Vancouver Whitecaps. But before that, Russell said the team needs to identify what went wrong during the past week — and then put an end to it.

“We’re gonna have to look at (the game) and learn our lessons, and not just from this game, but the past week,” Russell said. “There’s a lot of things that we have to look at and take accountability for as a team and as players.”

This story was originally published June 24, 2023 at 9:34 PM.