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Simon Mignolet made it clear that the issue of spacing soccer fields is a major problem. But that doesn’t seem to be a concern for the Sporting Kansas City defender.
Courtesy of the Chicago Fire, the Wolves played their final game of the regular season on Wednesday and the Red Bulls and Galaxy played in their semifinal that night. And on Thursday, Sporting did play the FC Dallas two days before the Chicago FC clash on Saturday afternoon. The result was a 3-1 loss for Sporting which marked the sixth loss in seven games for Sporting since the start of March and left them three points behind Real Salt Lake in the Western Conference.
“I’m not too concerned about the goal score,” Mignolet said after the team’s practice on Friday. “We lost three games in a row, so we’re just going to try to get our record back to the way it was before.”
He believes the start of the season is much different now, to take advantage of the talent in the Kansas City organization.
“It’s a different group, everyone is competing,” he said. “There is a good mixture of experienced guys and kids, guys who are coming in the league and also people who played in the last two World Cups.”
That, he believes, should have an affect on the team.
“We have a good midfield team and that’s what made the difference last year, but with these guys, we’re not worrying about that in the last few games.”
He also hopes that the team’s “divide” at the starting goalie has something to do with the team’s recent woes.
“I think the mix in goal was a little bit of mix. Every few games, our goalie gets confidence. Every few games, they think they are playing well. They may get a chance to get another chance and they try to get the best out of it, even though they don’t get it.”
Or, as Chief executive Russell Brands has said, that’s what good teams do.
And he believes the focus on spacing will continue to drive the team to this point.
“We’re going to have to be as good as possible to be close to going home in the playoffs,” Mignolet said. “We have a lot of talent up front, but there is so much other stuff going on.”
“[We have] more confidence, more belief in ourselves, we know we can win,” he said. “It is a chance to get where we want to go, and we want to do that.”
Watch Sporting Kansas City’s practice session below.
