Disappointing Season In Prospective

Sporting Kansas City's title defense season came to an end on Thursday night in the knockout round of the MLS playoffs. I think many fans, players, coaches and staff in the front office will call this season a disappointment. For people to consider this season a disappointment is a huge accomplishment for this franchise.

Attendance at Sporting Park was not hurt by Sporting KC's season. They broke their average attendance record for a season at Sporting Park averaging 19,714 (+5 from 2013) in a stadium that has a seating capacity of 18,467. Every game was a sellout and the team now stands at 53 straight sellouts for MLS games.

Sporting Kansas City MLS Playoff Knockout Round Game Review

In a win or go home game Kansas City came out and played with the urgency needed to start the game on the road in New York (actually New Jersey). Sporting looked as good as they had in the last 10 games to start. The changes to the lineup did help, especially having Benny back out on the field.

As the first half went on New York started to open up a few chances, but luckily for Sporting none of of them went in. The first half ended in a 0-0 tie and I think Sporting was happy about they. They were playing a more defensive game making sure that they had as many bodies behind the ball as possible. This showed in the first have possession numbers as Sporting only had the ball 38.7% of the time, the only 5 minute interval that they had the majority of the possession in the first half was the first five minutes. In the majority of the games this year Sporting would dominate the possession numbers, so they weren't playing their normal game, and that was not a bad thing.