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Clash of styles as Atlanta United visit SKC (Aug 06, 2017)
MLS' best defense hosts the league's best offense as Atlanta United FC travels to Children's Mercy Park Sunday night to face Sporting Kansas City at Kansas City, Kan.
Sporting Kansas City (9-4-9, 36 points) will be looking to extend its franchise-record unbeaten streak in MLS matches to 21 games.
Sporting KC is giving up .77 goals per game, the only squad under 1.0. Tim Melia leads MLS with nine clean sheets and he's saving a league-best 78.8 percent of the shots on goal that he's faced.
"They defend as a unit; they don't give you a lot of space to get in between the lines," Atlanta head coach Tata Martino said through an interpreter. "They play really short passes, and they try to keep the possession. Because they play such short passes, when they lose the ball they're all together in the line. So it makes it hard to break them down."
Atlanta United (10-7-4, 34 points) is scoring an MLS-best 1.95 goals per match in their first season in MLS, .05 better than any other club. They've been shut out only twice all season. The team that dictates the pace and style of play will go a long way toward determining who gets the three points from the match.
"When they put the (Atlanta) team together this past year, I thought before this season that they had a very dynamic team," SKC manager Peter Vermes said. "Individually, they have some players that can change the outcome of the game on their own. They like to build out, so they want to keep the ball. I think they have a very good team and a very dangerous team."
Atlanta is led by All-Star Miguel Almiron (eight goals, nine assists) and Hector Villalba (10 goals, four assists). The Five Stripes currently sit in fifth place in the Eastern Conference and own four wins and a draw in their last five league matches. The team also has a 4-1-2 record against the Western Conference, averaging 2.7 goals in those seven meetings.
SKC's offense has been sporadic. The team has scored three goals five times this season, but it also been shut out eight times. The team is third in MLS in shots (320) but only 18th in goals.
Sporting also will still be looking to refine a new identity in their second match since trading forward Dom Dwyer. SKC will have the club's top scorer, Gerso Fernandes (six goals, one assist), back after he served a one-game suspension in the last game. Benny Feilhaber is the only other player on Sporting with more than three goals.
This weekend also marks the introduction of Video Review in all MLS regular-season and playoff matches for the remainder of the year. Every game, a Video Assistant Referee (VAR) will serve as the new fifth member of the officiating crew.
The role of the VAR is to alert the head referee to potential clear and obvious errors or serious missed incidents in the following four game-changing situations: goals, penalty kicks, straight red cards and cases of mistaken identity.
