The weather may be 30 degrees cooler than when the club arrived on Friday afternoon, but there's little room to make excuses ahead of Sunday's match at Sporting KC (1 p.m. PT; ESPN, YouTube TV, 950 KJR AM, El Rey 1360 AM). Goalless and scoreless through the first three matches, the Rave Green put in a focused shift in their lone in-market training session at Swope Soccer Village before facing first-place SKC.
"It's a little chilly, the weather turned," Head Coach Brian Schmetzer said after training. "So we're not going to face a hot summer day [like the past two seasons]. Energy is good. It's going to be a tough game, they are going to have to toughen up. They are going to have to match up to everything Sporting throws at them and be ready for it."
After a warmup that included stretching and short sprints, the squad played 5-v-2 in two big groups to focus on touch and quick passes. The second half of training featured a run of play on a shorter field, with the guys simulating a match after last week's bye.
"The layoff did us some good," Schmetzer added. "They should be fully rested, lots of energy. Hopefully that manifests itself into a good performance."
As a whole, the club was dialed in and training hard throughout the session.
"[We] came out with energy today," midfielder Alex Roldan said. "It was clean, it was crisp. We got to the point in hopes we can make the transition tomorrow when we play KC. It's a crucial three points this week coming from three games down. We need to get things going."
SOCIAL MEDIA ROUNDUP
Nouhou + Cristian selfies should be required every road trip:
Hotel shenanigans with Román:
Director of Sports Medicine Chris Cornish led the team on a walk to Starbucks, naturally:
Another day, another training session:
How on earth was I supposed to pack for this weekend?
