** 2013 Sporting Kansas City / Soccer Thread **

[|Zach|]

Current Situation | MLS Cup Finalists. Championship game is December 7th at 3:00 on ESPN.
Previous Match | 2-1 against Houston (2-1 win on aggregate)

Last Game Highlights





MLS Cup

[Demonpenz]

good man

[Kidd Lex]

Thanks Zach!!!

[|Zach|]

One month into the MLS season.

[SPATCH]

Originally Posted by Demonpenz

I love C.J. and all, but I couldn't help wondering if Convey would be better where he is at, seems like C.J. is just playing where he is because he is the most athletic, then Teal comes back..where do you play all these people haha. Luckily there are a ton of games in late summer to find minutes for these guys.

I've felt like CJ would serve the team better by coming off of the bench later in matches to provide energy and poach a goal...

Start Convey or even Jacob Peterson on the left side.

[|Zach|]

Originally Posted by the_spatula

I've felt like CJ would serve the team better by coming off of the bench later in matches to provide energy and poach a goal...

Start Convey or even Jacob Peterson on the left side.

Could be. He wears defenders the **** out and holds and distributes pretty well but needs to finish better.

I like convey but it seems we have a billion people putting in service...huge fan of Jacob Peterson looking forward to him being healthy.

[Demonpenz]

CJ the hype man..flavoorrrrr flav

[Demonpenz]

is THE GOD HYPOTHESIS going to tailgate?

[Chest Rockwell]

I hope I'm wrong, but I don't expect United to put up much of a showing tonight.

They were horrible offensively with DRo out in the first two games and not much better with him v. NY and against Clark Hunt's favorite franchise. The only scoring they've done all year was an opportunistic goal by Pajoy against RSL and on a defensive mistake by CHsFF (granted that was a pretty, pretty strike by Rafael, but it was set up by a cluster eff of huge proportions by the Crew defense). Passing has been atrocious all over the pitch and they've had all kinds of problems maintaining possession.

I certainly don't expect that to change minus DRo, Thorrington and DeLeon. Pontius has been 90 percent baffling and 10 percent Pontius.

At BEST I'm thinking they'll be happy with a 0-0 draw if Bill Hamid does lots of Bill Hamid things and it ends up being a game very similar to the NYRB match.

This DCU team just isn't very good right now and it could be ugly from their end.

[WoodDraw]

In USMNT news, this is a big (and positive, if you ask me) change:

Official: 2013 Gold Cup winner will play 2015 GC winner in playoff for berth in 2017 Confederations Cup #concacaf

The best solution would have been to go to a four year cycle, but, as always, $$$$$$

[|Zach|]

Originally Posted by Chest Rockwell

I hope I'm wrong, but I don't expect United to put up much of a showing tonight.

They were horrible offensively with DRo out in the first two games and not much better with him v. NY and against Clark Hunt's favorite franchise. The only scoring they've done all year was an opportunistic goal by Pajoy against RSL and on a defensive mistake by CHsFF (granted that was a pretty, pretty strike by Rafael, but it was set up by a cluster eff of huge proportions by the Crew defense). Passing has been atrocious all over the pitch and they've had all kinds of problems maintaining possession.

I certainly don't expect that to change minus DRo, Thorrington and DeLeon. Pontius has been 90 percent baffling and 10 percent Pontius.

At BEST I'm thinking they'll be happy with a 0-0 draw if Bill Hamid does lots of Bill Hamid things and it ends up being a game very similar to the NYRB match.

This DCU team just isn't very good right now and it could be ugly from their end.

I doubt they have a good day at the office in KC but I don't see them as struggling team long term. They will put it together and be right up there.

[|Zach|]

During Matt Besler's year of change, a love of Kansas City remains



KANSAS CITY, Mo. – So long as he wears Sporting blue, so long as he loads that chip onto his shoulder before every match against a big-market glamor club, Matt Besler will never stop being a hometown hero.

He knows he's fortunate to play the game he loves in the city he loves, a city he's still discovering after moving north from the suburb where he grew up. He never gets tired of fans coming up to him to wish him and his club well, of hearing the fans who make up Sporting Park's raucous and passionate Cauldron sing his name to the tune Biz Markie made famous:

Oh Besler, you ...you got what we need ... and you anchor our defense, yeah, you anchor our defense …

When he talks about all of these things, his eyes widen. His face opens up in a grin. When he recounts the “Flyover Country” digs he's heard, or stories about college classmates who thought Kansas City was located in the South, it's with a headshake that says, "Are you kidding me?"

So have no worries, KC – Matt Besler loves you, every square mile of you on both sides of the state line, and he's here for you. Didn't he just prove that by signing a three-year extension with Sporting Kansas City in the offseason, turning down a chance to play in Europe?

“If they would have told me to sign a 10-year deal,” he said, “and I would have known that Sporting would be competitive as it is now for all 10 of those years, I would have signed it.”

It's just time for him to be more. Time for the local kid made good to step to the side a bit, and for the player that kid has become to take the spotlight. And with his standout World Cup qualifying debut for the US national team, in one of the most hostile away environments in the world, Besler is making the most of that time.

“The first couple of years, it was really easy for me just to play that role as 'the Hometown Guy,'” he told MLSsoccer.com on Wednesday, during a sit-down over lunch near his Country Club Plaza apartment. “I did probably 15 stories just about that. I think this may be the year where it's the transition – where it's not just 'the Hometown Guy, and it's pretty cool that he's playing pretty well,' and all that stuff. Now I feel like it's 'Matt Besler, the defender for Sporting Kansas City.'

“Maybe now it's the second story, the hometown thing,” he went on. “The first story is the playing ability. The defender for Sporting Kansas City. Then the secondary story is, 'Oh, did you know that he's actually from Kansas City?' That's an additional, 'That's cool.' I think now, maybe nationally, people don't know that. I think in Kansas City, everyone knows that.”

Besler, who grew up in Overland Park, Kan., and was the then-Wizards' first-round MLS SuperDraft pick out of Notre Dame in 2009, isn't an overnight success story. Still, he's had his share of detractors despite those achievements.

When fans voted him an All-Star in 2011, the naysayers called it stuffing the ballot box for the Hometown Guy. When he was named MLSsoccer.com's Breakout Player of the Year, Defender of the Year and a member of the First XI in 2012, online commentors wondered what might have happened had LA's Omar Gonzalez been healthy all year, or whether flamboyant Frenchman Aurélien Collin – the other half of Sporting's center-back tandem and a First XI selection in his own right – should have been selected instead.

One night last week, with just 11 hours' advance notice and making just his second appearance for his country, Besler put that talk to bed.

---

Estadio Azteca sits at 7,200 feet, more than a third of a mile higher than MLS' highest venue. It is the fifth-largest stadium in the world, with a capacity of more than 105,000.

And when El Tri are at home against any opponent, especially the archrival Estados Unidos, their legions of supporters are not shy about hurling their derision – and sometimes, more tangible things – at the opposition.

Even being on the bench for a qualifier at the Coloso de Santa Úrsula, named for the Mexico City neighborhood in which it sits, can be both daunting and exhilarating.

Besler had already been there once before, as an unused sub for the Nats in their historic 1-0 friendly victory last summer – the United States' first win on Mexican soil. So when he learned that he'd be starting last week's qualifier because of a hamstring injury to Clarence Goodson, Besler was not entirely on unfamiliar ground.

“It helped, but the qualifier was a different level,” he said. “The energy, the pressure that you kind of felt, it was way different. But I could say, 'I've warmed up on that field. I've been in that locker room. I've walked up the stairs onto that field.' That feeling of being there before helped out a lot. It wasn't all new.”

The sheer volume of sound was, though. Azteca was about half-full for the friendly. For the qualifier, it was packed to the top row.

“You know like, after a concert, when you sit too close and you leave and you have that feeling in your ears? It's like that,” he said. “There's a buzz afterwards.”

For Besler and Gonzalez, the buzz lasted well after the ringing in their ears died down. The two young center backs, paired together but largely untested in a scoreless January draw with Canada, shut down Mexico's Javier “Chicharito” Hernández and Giovani dos Santos. When World Cup veteran – and Besler's former club teammate – Omar Bravo came in, they shut him down, too. The US walked out with a 0-0 tie that felt like a win, and Besler was a huge reason why.

LISTEN: Besler recounts dramatic draw on ExtraTime Radio

Sporting manager Peter Vermes saw the result as a payoff for Besler's work with his club, learning to put a more street-smart edge on the structured, suburban game he learned in his youth days.

“He's had a lot of progression here, and a lot of that stuff is stuff we talk about every day,” Vermes said. “He kind of has that in his world, and I think that's why he's there now. The credit you've got to give him is that he's open and willing to learn and he absorbs it quickly into his M.O.

"On the game itself, I don't care if you have tricks of the trade or not, playing at that stadium at any time – whether it's your first or last – it's always a big-pressure game. Having done it for his first, and done as well as he did, is a big feather in his cap.”

One of the lasting impressions of the match was of Besler gaming Chicharito, looking over his shoulder and getting the striker to move early into an offside position. It was a heady move, especially against such an unpredictable opponent.

“The way he moves – it's unbelievable, his movement,” Besler said during a club news conference shortly after he and winger Graham Zusi – who also starred in the match – returned home. “He makes runs where you're not running. So wherever you go, that's where he makes his run off of. He doesn't go to the near post or the far post. He waits for you to make your movement toward the ball, and then he'll go the other way.”

---

For a while this past offseason, Sporting fans worried aloud whether Besler and Chicharito, who plays for Manchester United, would be leaguemates. Premiership side Queens Park Rangers were among his suitors when his previous contract ran out, along with Birmingham City of the second-tier Championship and Belgian side KAA Gent.

Early on in the process, Besler was listening.

“I was going to be a free agent,” he said. “I was not under contract. I think 99.9 percent of anyone in my situation, you have to see what's out there, and you have to go and look at other places, at all of your options. So, yeah, I looked into it. And part of me got excited. When you hear that QPR really likes you as a player and they want to bring you in, yeah, that's pretty cool. And so of course you're interested and you want to find out more, but at the end of the day I had a very big desire to stay in Kansas City.”

And while the city itself figured into that decision, as did Sporting Park and the fans who pack it game after game, Besler's top reason for staying had nothing at all to do with sentiment.

“The club is No. 1. Kansas City, the city, is No. 2,” he said. “You know I love the city, but you can live somewhere else. You can enjoy another city. But if you're somewhere and the club is awful and you're not having fun, you're not enjoying it, then it's pointless to go there. That's why I like Kansas City so much, soccerwise.”

CHECK OUT THE COMPLETE ARCHIVES OF "THE WORD"

Besler loves his league, too, and believes MLS has a significant role to play in Jurgen Klinsmann's player pool not only for qualifying, but also for the World Cup in 2014.

“I don't need to go and play somewhere else,” he said. “Why can't MLS be one of the top leagues? Of course I want to stay here. I think it's good to have MLS players in the mix. At times, maybe MLS prepares you better for some of these games. Maybe other leagues prepare you better for the big games. But when you're going down to Honduras, or you're going down to Antigua, maybe some of the MLS guys – with their experience in the way MLS plays – maybe they're the guys.”

Klinsmann has been vocal, though, in challenging his players to get to the highest club level possible. Still, Besler doesn't anticipate that he'll be told to move abroad or risk being left out of future call-ups – for now, at least.

“I haven't thought about that yet,” he said. “The whole national team thing is kind of new, you know? And so, thinking about it just right now, if Jurgen came up to me and said, 'The only way you're going to make the World Cup roster is if you go overseas,' then maybe I'd have to think about doing it, if that's what I wanted to do. But right now, we haven't had any conversations. My opinion is that he probably wouldn't do that.”

---

Besler can't afford to waste any energy worrying about that now, anyway. After two straight finishes atop the Eastern Conference standings and last year's Open Cup win, Sporting have set their sights on bigger prizes this year: reaching the knockout stage of the CONCACAF Champions League and making the MLS Cup final.

“This team is really good, and I think we can be very successful,” he said. “That's what makes me really happy. That's where I want to be in five or six years, looking back. It's really cool to say, 'This was awesome. I played in Kansas City this whole time,' but it would even better to say, 'Look what we did with Sporting KC.'”

And if that's going to happen, Besler said, he can't afford any letdowns.

“I have no excuse now to have a bad game or to take a play off, to have a bad half or to have a bad three-game spell,” he said. “I think I should hold myself to the highest standard.”

Shortly after that exchange, near the end of the hour-long interview, a stranger stopped by Besler's table. He congratulated the defender on his performance at Azteca and Sporting's 2-0 win last week over Montreal, then wished him good luck in Friday night's home game against D.C. United.

PREVIEW: Sporting Kansas City vs. D.C. United (Friday, 8:30 pm ET; MLS LIVE)

Besler smiled and thanked the man, and he left. The encounter left Besler grinning, energized.

“That's why I love Kansas City, he said. “That right there. It's fun when people come up. It's not just the fact that they recognize you. It's what they say. It's not – and I think it comes back to the hometown thing – 'Oh, that's the kid who's from here, and he's on the Sporting team.' It's like, 'You guys crushed Montreal on Saturday night. I can't wait for the game Friday against D.C. United.' They know it. It's awesome.”

He smiled again.

“The people love the team,” he said. “They're involved. They love their players, and you can feel that. I can feel it every day. When that happens, it's like – now I want to go play for that guy. That guy pumps me up. He does.”

Steve Brisendine covers Sporting Kansas City for MLSsoccer.com.

[Chest Rockwell]

Originally Posted by |Zach|

I doubt they have a good day at the office in KC but I don't see them as struggling team long term. They will put it together and be right up there.

If they can get healthy, I think you're right and they should be fine. But that a if has started a seed of nervousness with me. DRo is getting up there and the repeated injuries are starting to concern me. De Leon has a hammy...and you know how those can be. Thorrington is ahead of schedule, but has the same injury DRo had last year.

The biggest issue right now is that they really use Thorrington and DRo to build things through midfield. When DRo is out, they have trouble generating any sort of competent push.

Thorrington was sort of figuring out how to be that guy buy himself in the RSL match before he got hurt. But now that both of them are out, I'm scuured to see what happens.

If there's any positive to the situation right now, it's that there may be a (very, very slight, I doubt Olsen does this) chance to see a 4-2-3-1 trotted out with this sort of front-end:

Rafael


Pontius - Agusto - Sanchez

Which I would be interested to see. That's a pretty inexperienced front that hasn't seen any actual game time together. It has potential on paper, but could be an abortion in actuality. The most life this team has shown this season has been when Sanchez is on the pitch.

This setup would allow DCU to match SKC's numbers in midfield, but I'm guessing it'll be the 4-1-3-2 they trotted out against Columbus with Pajoy and Raphael up top with Pontius, Sanchez, Porter underneath them. For the life of me I can't see Olsen imagining he can run the double pivot right now minus both DeRosario and Thorrington.

Of course my $0.02 is worth exactly jack and shit.

Anybody here not going? I'm planning on watching it and wouldn't mind some chatter.

[Kidd Lex]

Originally Posted by Demonpenz

is THE GOD HYPOTHESIS going to tailgate?

Bet your ass!!

Me & 3 buddies will be in newly discovered vip parking next to lot f (), with a large cooler full of beer, good cigars, and of course cheddar burgers by 5:30. Nothing says soccer like cheddar burgers.

Lets drop some BLUE HELL on their asses!! Go SKC!!

[Demonpenz]

I should be there. I will be the guy with a scarf. Black rimmed glasses and a beard.

[Kidd Lex]

Originally Posted by Demonpenz

I should be there. I will be the guy with a scarf. Black rimmed glasses and a beard.

Although you just described 14% of all skc fans, i will have cold beer waiting for you.

Look for 4, 30 year old guys, tailgating behind a silver late model altima.

boom.