Former Ghana Premier League Most Valuable Player Latif Atta Blessing has earned huge praises from Manager Peter Vermes after scoring a brace in Sporting Kansas City 3-0 win over FC Dallas in the US open cup game.
Sporting Kansas City advanced to the 2017 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup semifinals with a riveting 3-0 extra-time victory over FC Dallas on Tuesday night at Children’s Mercy Park.
After playing a man down for most of regulation, Sporting Kansas City struck three times in a wild extra session as Latif Blessing bagged a brace and Daniel Salloi added a late third to secure a spot in the semifinals against the San Jose Earthquakes.
Following the former Liberty player’s impressive form in the game, manager Peter Vermes praised Latif Blessing’s tremendous work ethic.
“He was big the whole game, I thought his work ethic was tremendous. But when we stuck him up front -- we were planning on trying to do that. We were trying to stretch it as long as we could because the guys were doing a good job of defending well,” he said after the game.
“And at the same time, we were thinking about getting Benny [Feilhaber] in later in the 80th minute and on. But we were still playing pretty well, we knew as soon as we were going to bring Benny in, we would stick Latif up top. We were hoping that he was going to cause them some problems being in the middle of the park. So he was a handful. He was very difficult for them. Shoot, a couple chances and he probably could’ve scored four goals if he wanted to.” He added.
The U.S. Open Cup semifinal will take place in August, with exact date, time and location to be announced Friday.
The 20 year old was also monitored by Black Stars coach Kwesi Appiah as well as former Ghana Captain Joe Addo.
Latif Blessing has now score four times from 11 appearances for the club.
By Lukman Evergreen Mumin