One Big Question:What's up with Ilie?
I know a lot of things went wrong for Sporting last year, and Peter Vermes had to take a couple of mulligans on player moves, and injuries added up, and a couple of stalwarts got older, and nobody could find the net with the regularity required of a top team – which Sporting were as recently as 2018, mind you – but Ilie's fallback has kind of been overlooked outside of KC, right?
There were just too many moments like this:
Is that all Ilie's fault? No, of course not. Do you want to see your No. 6 do more than just trail the play and then make one half-hearted effort at closing down? Yeah, yeah you do.
Ilie was legitimately one of the best d-mids in MLS in 2017 & 2018, but was nowhere near that level in 2019. He's got to get back there – or at least get close – if Sporting's going to make their way back into the postseason.
