Kansas City Holding Top Spot

Sporting Kansas City currently are at the top of the MLS in the Eastern Conference with 42 points collected so far, the American soccer league is edging the last few weeks before a champion can be crowned and it’s turning into a battle between Sporting Kansas City and DC United as they are following them closely behind in 2nd place.

The MLS is not only competition that Sporting Kansas City is performing as they have a number of matches scheduled to play in the CONCACAF Champions League. Peter Vermes is the manager of the American team and he revealed his satisfaction about his clubs’ 1-1 draw against Real Esteli.

When the match concluded, the head coach of Sporting Kansas City, Peter Vermes said:  “We want to go and get three points. There are a lot of things within the game that wound up being very difficult. It was not an easy game to play for a number of reasons. It wound up being very difficult. At the end, to come here and get a point from them at their place is good. We just have to make sure we take care of business at home. The field was very hard to play. The ball was just bouncing all over the place.”

The team of Peter Vermes had to travel to Nicaragua in order to play their opening match of the CONCACAF Champions League group and an early own goal from Jorge Claros gave Real Esteli the lead at the 6th minute but Sporting Kansas City equalized the match 10 minutes later thanks to a goal which arrived from the Spanish midfielder Antonio Rodriguez Dovale as he made his mark on the score-sheet by scoring from a free-kick set-piece.

Klinsmann Rejects Suggestions That Dempsey Will Be Out

The US national team manager Jurgen Klinsmann has rejected suggestions that the team are likely to be without star striker Clint Dempsey for the first few matches the World Cup 2014. The former Fulham and Tottenham star was unavailable for selection in the friendly match against Azerbaijan. The United States won this match quite comfortably 2-0, but this was largely a fitness exercise for the team. The US will be coming into the tournament in much better shape after majority of their players play in the MLS.

The MLS season began only a few weeks ago while the European-based players will be coming on the back of long and hard season. Dempsey has been playing in MLS since January after joining Seattle Sounders. Even though the former Tottenham striker was included in the starting line-up, Dempsey had to be withdrawn with only 10 minutes before kick-off. Klinsmann has stated that this was nothing but a precaution and he said that the players should be available for the upcoming matches without any trouble.

The US are potentially facing the toughest group in the World Cup as they will be coming up against the likes of Germany, Ghana, and Portugal. Klinsmann says that it is extremely important that the team does well in the pretournament friendly matches.

“No it’s not serious at all. He had a little bit of pain yesterday already in training and he told me about it. And then in (the) warm-up, he was just a little bit nervous about it,” said the former Germany manager. “Yeah, I’ll be ready. (It’s) just tightness. I was just feeling it a little bit (on Monday) and it was still tight again today, so it didn’t make sense to push it in the game,” said the player himself on the official website of the MLS.