In attack, we were a tick off. We didn’t play the right lanes, or we played them late. But openings were there. We didn’t exploit them. Defense. I’d rather not say.
The "replace Seth Sinovic" game we've played the last 4-5 seasons really needs to be successful this season... Our left side has been abused. Not totally just Seth's fault he's gotten no help from Gerso and little help from Besler.
See, and I thought Seth has held his own. Zusi on the other hand has had a howler, thought he could have done better on both the 2nd and 3rd goals. He's never been the greatest of defenders, but he's good enough for MLS. Not against this team though.
Zusi hasn't been any better, but goal 1: Sinovic's man burned him to score. Goal 2, Sinovic beaten down the left side on the cross that led to the goal. Goal 3, Sinovic beaten down the left again for the cross that led to the goal.
I could have sworn they were coming through Zusi all night. I tried going through the stats to pinpoint what went wrong, but it's not gonna happen. I want to vomit, then cry. Here's my analysis, they were better than us at 11 positions. The team speed wasn't even close. They destroyed our midfield, which put our defense under way too much pressure for 83 minutes, and made our attack irrelevant. Beyond that, whaaaaaaah, waaaaaaaah. Wow, the gap between them and us was not tiny.
Yup, a 90 million dollar team against a 20 million dollar team. SKC has no speed and MTY is all speed with a team full of talented internationals. It was very painful to watch. Now we know how the Montreal fans felt.
I don't disagree with you, but on this night MTY could have picked on anyone lined up for SKC. If we had a lock down left back, they would have gone to the right back...then the center back...and it seems the results would have been the same. On the third goal it looked like MTY through two runners against Seth alone, so something must have broken down elsewhere as well. Just hard to watch.
The salary cap hot takes are even more prevalent than Monterrey goals today. Yeesh. Monterrey is the better team, and it showed, but the truth is this side is a terrible away side, even when they do get results, so I don't know how we possibly dreamed they would have the tactical approach to not being demolished in Mexico. Now let's play our starters on the weekend and rest them for the perfunctory home leg.
I said this several times in the other Champions League threads, but trying to win CCL was pointless this year given who is in the Semi Finals. No MLS is going to beat Monterrey or Tigres. That is just the reality of top Liga MX teams vs top MLS teams and reflects the different in salary cap and talent. That said, the fact that this was a total ass kicking and not a 1-0 or 2-0 loss is 100% on Peter. He's a great coach, scout, club manager, etc., but dammit his stubbornness and unwillingness to ever make a tactical change is forever going to limit SKC. When you are clearly the less talented team, you don't go to the other team's home and try to "play the way we play". You sit in two organized blocks of 4 and defend like hell. If PV had rolled out a 4-2-3-1 with two No.6's, that was a 2-0 loss not a 5-0 (could have been 8-0) ass kicking. Coach thinks he go play attacking soccer against a better team, well lots of spaces opened up and the backline gets torched. We also saw a limit in the teams defensive personnel. Zusi, Seth and Fontas are all slower than the average player at their position. Add to that, Zusi is a well below average 1v1 defender for a right back. Those three are all in the lineup because of their quality feet and ability to play possession. When the midfield can't hold the ball and we get turned over, all three have well below average ability to recover against the counter. Monterrey had counter attacking numbers on us all night long. Defenders to slow to recover. No adjustments made. Whatever....glad CCL is over so we can finally focus 100% on MLS and not pulling a Toronto. The West is super competitive and SKC are going to need every point they can get come playoffs. I hope we see a first team lineup on Sunday and a Rangers lineup on Thursday. Monterrey….you are the much better team. Hat tipped.
i didn't expect to win, but i thought we were way past being embarrassed down in mexico. this one's actually more embarrassing than our cruz azul or morelia drubbings. i know monterrey is the better squad, but our guys are much better than they showed, and frankly, they should be ashamed of their performances. a number of our guys had the worst games of their skc career (in my opinion), and they managed to do it in one of the most important games in the club's history. and vermes... what a clueless game manager. who goes up against a superior opponent in every position, at their house, and throws everyone forward? i don't even want to hear his excuses, because he always has one that makes it not his fault. absolutely everyone in the organization gets a failing grade.
couldn't agree more. These sort of ties happen all the time in UEFACL, and no team that has a fifth of the salary of another team plays as offensively as SKC did yday. What makes it even weirder is that imo we have the personnel to even come out with an away goal with counterattacking soccer. Even in the little we showed offensively it was evident that it woulda been possible for Gerso and Russell to make runs behind their defense while still maintaining a solid shape for the defense. I would understand yesterday's approach more if we had pacy defenders and slow attackers, but that's not the case. This being said, I feel like our back line understood its speed limitations and dropped off very quickly, but this allowed Monterrey acres of space in front of them as the midfield was busy trying to press them. This game makes me fear our ties against Houston and Dallas even more than it did last season.
The comments about players' need to feel ashamed or embarrassed are a bit much. They were beaten by the better team. The bolded portion (my emphasis) above articulates clearly that the players never had a chance. Yes, they looked bad, which is primarily a credit to the other team taking advantage of SKC poor tactical approach.
i don't know if there was a lack of a lack of effort. i think Monterry just made us look bad because they were the better team. We don't play teams that fast. Our normal style of pinging the ball around, which generally works, fails when they're both fast enough to step in and fill the lanes, and smart enough to see the pass coming before we know we're goind to hit it.
Agree, but had we come out in a 4-5-1 to defend this was still gonna be an L. I drank the Toluca Koolaid, not realilzing it was a knockoff brand without any real flavor for Liga MX. I knew Monterrety was better, but I thought better but still kind of in the same realm. I did not know how wrong I was.
This was my main observation while watching the game. Monterrey's players were anticipating SKC's passes and getting right where they needed to be to disrupt them all night, and then struck with overwhelming quickness and speed once they turned the ball over.
Agree that a 4-5-1 or 4-2-3-1 would have resulted in a loss, but they would come back to KC with a chance to advance. Going to Monterrey and being tactically naïve/stubborn put SKC in a hopeless situation. Adjusting how you play to fit the opponent is OK. My kids coach does it when they come up against an obviously superior opponent. If academy coaches can do it, the senior team coach can too.
Agree and oh boy, too bad there isn't a mercy rule. So much for my crowing about and gleeful anticipation of having a *meaningful and competitive* match against a quality Mexican opponent at home.
yeah, the combination of bad tactics and bad performance led to the drubbing. if it had been just either one, we would've still lost, but not by 5 goals... at least i don't think. i stand by my comment about the players, though. yes, monterrey being better forced us into some bad looks... but my god, we had so many DUMB giveaways and misplaced passes that are on no one but themselves. it's on vermes (mostly) for players getting caught out of position, but it's on the players themselves for playing like dogshit and passing directly to the opposing players or holding the ball and getting caught trying to dribble out of your own end (i'm looking at you zusi and fontas).
Rant alarm. I have been a consummate PV guy on these pages since I joined. PV got it wrong last night. Specifically, too much space between back four and everyone else. Got it. Yada yada yada yada. But my question — especially given that there aren’t exactly a bunch of noobs on these pages — is this: where were all these shouts of conservative/practical ‘common sense’ before the game started? There were none. Why? Bc sometimes PV’s tactical rigidity gets it right, or at least, gets it through. I preplayed this game over and over in my head. I too feared our tactical preferences versus a team like Monterrey. I think we all did. We were facing a rich club who really doesn’t want the ball, they’re faster than us, etc. Yet nobody was shouting for two banks of four pregame. Look, this team has problems. As noted in this thread Seth, Fontas, and Zusi have weaknesses. But I think PV tactically put his players out there with idea to play to their strengths. And... it didn’t work out. If you want something different, that’s cool. But take inventory. Because if you want something different — this season — you’d also better get ready to make wholesale roster changes as well. We are an MLS team. We can’t be a Mourinho Chelsea one game, and a Klopp Liverpool the next. IF you think double banking these same players, at Monterrey, would’ve somehow yielded a different reault, I’ve got ocean front property in Leawood for you. Maybe it would’ve been 3 nihl. Who knows. But if we go in there and bunker, I guarantee two things: (a) we lose, and (b) people are clamoring about PV not playing ‘our game’, and SKC rolling over, and selling out. Yada yada.
I hear you, and I actually wanted to include something in my comment about me being Captain Hindsight. I didn't know the first thing about Monterrey before the game so it woulda been pretty ridiculous for me to make any specific suggestions on the game beforehand. I'm also aware that Vermes knows infinitely more about tactics than I do so it's very possible that there is something beyond stubbornness that justified his approach yesterday. Given my 25 years of experience of watching UCL games I was just very surprised that that was the path he took, since I have hardly if ever seen this by an inferior side away from home. I also think that we need to look beyond this game and realize that even before this game, we knew that perhaps the greatest weakness in SKC is pace in the back. This showed last season when we at least still had Opara, and it shows even more now. So looking ahead at some of the ties against teams with pacy forwards, something needs to be done.
Watching Toluca up 3-0 in the 70th minute against Monterrey. [shrug] I guess it shows how much Monterrey was focused and ready for Sporting.