In the 41st minute of Sporting KC’s midweek matchup against the Houston Dynamo on Wednesday, Brad Davis corralled a pass from Boniek Garcia near the sideline and turned upfield to see Sporting KC’s Matt Besler blocking his path. The center back, pulled miles from his goal and nearly into the Houston coaching box, clattered into Davis and earned an easy yellow card.
In the 88th minute of the same game, with Sporting KC now trailing by a goal despite being up a man, a moment of madness earned teammate Benny Feilhaber a yellow too. Frustrated by a call against him, the creative attacking midfielder picked up the dead ball and booted it out of bounds.
While Feilhaber stared down the referee, a yellow card went up to reward his petulance.
Taken separately and at face value, these two incidents seem mildly uneventful and unimportant. Neither foul led to anything disastrous defensively at the time, and both players went the full 90 minutes.
But pull the lens out to the macro view and things get a bit spikier for Sporting KC as it prepares to host Seattle in a crucial matchup on Sunday (2 pm PDT; ESPN).
Sporting KC took two enormous body shots to the gut with those two yellows. Both infractions pushed Feilhaber and Besler over the edge of yellow card accumulation, and now both players will miss Sunday’s game. It’s a brutal fist to an SKC side that’s suddenly a point behind Seattle in the Western Conference standings with a game in hand.
“Feilhaber tried really hard to get his yellow, and got his yellow at the end,” Sounders head coach Sigi Schmid said this week. “Benny does a lot of good things for them. He’s the one who’s led them with his passing, he’s got a lot of assists, and he’s sort of the guy who sets the tempo and opens up the game for them.”
Schmid hinted this week that perhaps Feilhaber wouldn’t have played much this weekend anyway – SKC have the U.S. Open Cup final to deal with next week, their first shot at the title since 2012 – and that either veteran Paulo Nagamura or World Cup winger Graham Zusi could step inside for SKC.
While it’s true Feilhaber gradually fell out of Jurgen Klinsmann’s plans with the U.S. Men’s National Team for reasons widely unknown, he’s been a shoe-in MVP finalist for the duration of the season. He’s tied for the league lead in assists with 14 and has still managed 10 goals through 28 matches this season. The only other player in MLS to ring up a double-double so far in goals and assists is Toronto FC’s Sebastian Giovinco, the presumptive MVP frontrunner.
Feilhaber’s only missed one full game this season, a 3-2 loss to Columbus Crew SC on Aug. 22. To compensate that day, Zusi and midfielder Mikey Lopez both played decidedly narrow in front of Nagamura. It was essentially two players attempting to cover for the job of one. That robbed Sporting KC of its width and central pacemaking, and Columbus made them pay.
“He’s a tremendous player,” Sounders defender Zach Scott said of Feilhaber. “He’s the guy who runs their engine room. I wouldn’t put it past the coaching staff there to find somebody who can fit in seamlessly, but he’s a tough guy to replace.”
Besler, meanwhile, has been a rock for SKC’s back line and logged 2,500 of 2,610 possible first team minutes this season through Wednesday’s match. He hasn’t missed a single minute since March 14.
Vermes hasn’t coached a game with both players out of the lineup since a 1-0 win over the Portland Timbers on June 27, 2014. That means Sunday will mark exactly 15 months since those two Kansas City moons were both knocked out of alignment.
Sporting KC’s record this season with either Besler or Feilhaber out for an entire game is 0-2, which includes a 3-1 loss to FC Dallas on March 14 and the loss to Columbus in August. Both came on the road, and while that doesn’t point directly to the team’s inability to generate goals without Feilhaber, it does cast ominous shadows across the team’s ability to stop them without Besler.
Sporting KC has had leaky defensive issues this season even with Besler in the lineup, but knocking out that support beam doesn’t make life any easier.
In the only game Sporting KC played without Besler this year, Vermes started Kevin Ellis and Ike Opara in the middle. While Ellis could well start - he did against Houston on Wednesday - Opara had a promising year cut short with a season-ending Achilles injury four games after the FCD loss.
The Sounders continue to climb the ladder in the Western Conference toward a higher seed before the regular season slams shut next month. Facing a suddenly limping Sporting KC side without arguably its two most crucial players certainly won’t hurt their drive to get there.
