Sporting Kansas City reflects on its 2015 season

The black, heavy-duty trash bags left the Swope Soccer Village on Wednesday morning, squeezed in the palms of a handful of Sporting Kansas City players. Six days after it ended its season with a knockout-round playoff loss in Portland, Sporting KC held its exit meetings, and players used the bags to clean out their lockers while reflecting on the 2015 season.

How do you label such a season?

Sporting KC won the U.S. Open Cup championship in late September — its second in four seasons — using penalty kicks to defeat Philadelphia in the final. But for the second straight year, its MLS season concluded in October — without a playoff victory.

“I think we underachieved because of the ability this team has. And everyone feels that. Everyone is disappointed the season ended this early,” striker Dom Dwyer said. “We have a strong base for next year. We have a lot of guys who are ready to get back fit and be healthy. Hopefully we can hang on to some guys, and obviously some stuff is still up in the air.

“We’re not delighted with this season, but it’s a successful season. It was difficult, but I think we did well and we can be proud of ourselves.”

The seesaw nature of that assessment is indicative of the season, which once included thoughts of a first-round playoff bye in the Western Conference. And even as those hopes transformed into a team fighting for its postseason fate on the final day of the regular season, Sporting KC was still able to sandwich in the U.S. Open Cup trophy.

And then there’s the playoff game. To a player, Sporting KC praised the way it performed in the loss in Portland — a defeat determined by an MLS record-breaking 11 rounds of penalty kicks.

So on Wednesday, the club’s exit meetings instead focused on the regular season, when it settled for the sixth playoff seed in the Western Conference but was only two points shy of a No. 2 seed that would have included the aforementioned first-round bye.

“If there’s one thing that sticks out right now that we can learn from, it’s that we have to try to get the highest seed possible in the playoffs,” captain Matt Besler said. “I don’t know if there’s much more that we could have done in that Portland match. We laid out absolutely everything we had on the field. We played a great game. We really did. But at the end of the day, we still fell short.

“It’s such a big task to do the play-in game on the road. We’ve had to do that two years in a row now, and we’ve fallen short both years.”

The reflection of 2015 preceded a look toward 2016.

Sporting KC has two players out of contract — defender Seth Sinovic and homegrown goalkeeper Jon Kempin, with the latter representing a more likely return.

Sporting KC coach Peter Vermes said Wednesday he wasn’t ready to publicize his winter shopping list, but the club almost certainly will be interested in improving its depth on the wing, in the midfield and at central defender.

“I would say that everything is open for consideration at the moment,” Vermes said.

On the other hand, some of the desired improvement could come from within. Defender Ike Opara missed the last six months of the season, and midfielder Roger Espinoza did not appear for the last two-plus months, both due to injury. Sporting KC anticipates the two key starters will be healthy for preseason training camp in late January.

Vermes mentioned an expected step forward from a class of rookies — defenders Amadou Dia and Saad Abdul-Salaam and midfielder Connor Hallisey. Dia and Abdul-Salaam started the playoff match in Portland.

Sporting KC also received noteworthy production from goalkeeper Tim Melia, defensive midfielder Soni Mustivar and Krisztian Nemeth — all of whom were in their first season with the team.

“There were a lot of new faces this year. We had to integrate a lot of new players,” Besler said. “I think there’s a lot of guys that stepped up and got great experience, and that’s something we can build off of for next season.”

This story was originally published November 5, 2015 at 2:46 PM with the headline "Sporting Kansas City reflects on its 2015 season."