"Utterly ridiculous."
Sporting Kansas City head coach Peter Vermes didn't mince words on Wednesday night after Sporting fell 1-0 to FC Dallas on the road.
Vermes was referring to a play in the final minutes of regulation when FCD goalkeeper Jimmy Maurer appeared to tackle Sporting midfielder Gadi Kinda near the goal line. The play was off a short corner that resulted in a rebound that fell to Kinda, whose follow-up was saved by Maurer before the scuffle took place. You can watch the full play below.
"It's utterly ridiculous that that's not a goal. If the ball doesn't enter the goal than it should be a penalty for the goalkeeper tackling Gadi Kinda, and it would be a red card. So it's one of two things: it's a goal or it's a penalty and a red card for the goalkeeper. The fact that it's not with VAR and everything else, I can not for the life of me understand how that call could be made. Because I was told explicitly by the referee that the [Video Assistant Referee] also called it a foul on our guy," said Vermes in a postgame press conference.
"Sad, very said. Points taken away from us for absolutely no reason."
The referee for the match was Armando Villarreal while the Video Assistant Referee was Malik Badawi. A draw for Sporting would've put them level with the Seattle Sounders and Portland Timbers at the top of the Western Conference.
"It's unbelievable to see how we lost points because of that," said defender Jaylin Lindsey. "For me and my teammates we see that the 'keeper tackles Gadi and the way that the referee — giving them the foul — is atrocious. It's disrespectful to us because I think they took points away from us."
