Sporting Kansas City solves the Houston Dynamo postseason riddle, will host the MLS final on December 7
Early on, it looked so grim. Sporting Park packed a raucous and record-breaking crowd of 21,650, seemingly to watch an ugly history repeat itself once again.
It wasn’t more than three minutes into Sporting Kansas City’s playoff game when their eternal postseason foils the Houston Dynamo put a goal on the scoreboard. A weird deflection from Boniek Garcia off Sporting Kansas City defender Matt Besler sailed past goalkeeper Jimmy Nielsen.
A standing-room-only crowd that had been screaming amid so much pregame hype and bombast fell silent, save a few thousand fans who delivered boo-birds to the orange-clad Dynamo, a team that had dispatch Sporting Kansas City from the playoffs in front of their home crowd the last two years.
“It wasn’t the ideal start for us,” said Sporting forward Dom Dwyer afterward.
It wasn’t, but the rest of the game was.
The 1-0 lead was as good as it got for Houston. Sporting Kansas City dominated the rest of the way to win 2-1 and secure their first trip to the Major League Soccer Championship game since 2004.
“Even though they scored early, we never panicked,” Sporting coach Peter Vermes told reporters after the game.
They won’t add to their frequent flyer miles to play for the MLS Cup; the game will be played in Kansas City on December 7.
The first half opened with a blazing pace. Both teams hustled back and forth. After Houston took their early lead, Sporting Kansas City drew even when forward C.J. Sapong capitalized on a terrible defensive lapse by Dynamo’s Bobby Boswell. Boswell tried to clear the ball from danger just inside the penalty box when the ball instead trickled toward his own goal. An unmarked Sapong snagged the ball and buried it past Houston keeper Tally Hall.
A nervous Sporting Park crowd went bananas. They kept up the screaming and chanting, prodding the home team to carry up a furious pace. Sporting dominated the balance of the first half, but couldn’t snag the upper hand.
The second half slowed down considerably. In fact, Houston looked like it was slowly trying to take over. The notoriously defensive-minded team from the Lone Star State did its best to push the ball toward its offensive zone.
But Sporting suddenly surged ahead when its midfielder Benny Feilhaber, who had given Houston the fits all night, slotted a pass ahead to striker Dwyer who split two Houston defenders to go one-on-one against goalkeeper Hall. Hall didn’t stand a chance when Dwyer flung the ball into the net for the lead.
It’s often that a soccer team with a late lead will pack it in, surrender offensively and dare the team from behind to try and even the score. But Sporting played the rest of the game like they were the ones losing, going for the insurance goal. Houston barely mustered a decent chance to even the score.
When the final whistle sounded, Sporting Park erupted. Confetti flew. Fans shrieked. Sporting players in their sky-blue jerseys hugged one another in front of the boisterous Cauldron. Solemn Houston players stood still, hands on their hips.
After two years of dominating regular season play only to suffer postseason disappointments at the hands of the Dynamo, it was off the final.
The then-Kansas City Wizards started the 2000s off so promising for the local pro sports scene, winning the MLS Cup that year. But the years that have followed have been difficult ones in Kansas City. The Wizards made the final in 2004 but then fell into a slump of mediocrity. The Kansas City Royals also suffered a string of futile seasons. The Kansas City Chiefs, one of the best football teams for much of the 1990s, has spent much of the last few years playing miserable football.
All three franchises have climbed the ladder in their respective sports leagues. Can Sporting make Kansas City a title town again? Can the once moribund soccer franchise reach the top of the sport in North America?
“As much as it’s an accomplishment, we’ve got one more to go,” Vermes said.
They won’t have to wait long to find out.
