Sporting Split Preseason Games Today

Sporting Kansas City continued preseason today with two games.  The first game was a game that featured heavily in reserves against the Columbus Crew.  Trialist goalkeeper, Brian Sylvester got his first appearance of the preseason for Sporting in goal.  Kansas City got off to a flying start as Soony Saad played a nice ball through to Dom Dwyer who scored to put Sporting up 1-0 inside the first 5 minutes.  The lead only lasted a few minutes as Shawn Sloan equalized for Columbus in the 8th minute.  In first half stoppage time, Ethan Finlay scored to give the Crew a 2-1 lead heading into half time.

Just before the hour mark, Columbus scored again, this time from Justin Meram.  Five minutes later, Konrad Warzycha scored against his former club, heading a free kick into the net to make it 4-1 Crew.  Kansas City was able to get a goal back shortly after that, as Saad scored off an assist from Kyle Miller.  After Saad's goal in the 68th, Columbus scored one more goal, in the 71st, from Ben Speas.  Sporting made very few subs in the game, making only 2 subs, letting the rest of the players go 90 minutes.

In the night cap, Sporting KC took on the Tampa Bay Rowdies in their final group play game of the Disney Pro Soccer Classic.  Sporting played their first choice lineup, save for Chance Myers who was held out with a quad injury, although Peter Vermes said post game he could have gone.  Throughout the first half, Sporting dominated play, but struggled with the final ball, only testing Tampa Bay's goalkeeper once or twice in the half.

In the second half, Kansas City continued to dominate play but continued to struggle with the final ball.  Claudio Bieler had a fantastic chance after playing a 1-2 with Benny Feilhaber found Bieler behind the Tampa Bay defense, but Bieler put the shot over the bar.  Finally in the 76th minute KC found the goal that they deserved.  Oriol Rosell won the ball in midfield, playing it to Paulo Nagamura.  Nagamura picked out CJ Sapong on the wing.  Sapong one timed his cross into the middle for Graham Zusi.  Zusi took a touch into the middle and then fired a shot low and into the corner to give Kansas City a 1-0 lead.  KC continued to pressure from there, but were never able to find a second goal.

The win sees Kansas City finish 2-1 in group play at the Pro Soccer Classic and finish second in their group.  That means Kansas City will take on the Philadelphia Union next Saturday at 5pm Central Time in the 3rd place match of the tournament.  The game will be a little less than a week before the two teams play in the First Kick of the season on March 2nd.  Before that game though, Sporting will have two friendlies on Wednesday the 20th against Toronto and the US U17 national team (which could feature Sporting KC Junior, Erik Palmer-Brown).