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The season is starting to take on a familiar feel.

It’s the fifth time in seven games City SC has been shut out, and while this time it did better at getting the ball into dangerous positions in the box, this time it was the team’s finishing that let them down, as it couldn’t score on any of its 11 shots, four of which were on goal. Sporting Kansas City, which was winless in its first six games of this season (and 11 over the past two seasons) and playing its first game in 16 years without Peter Vermes coaching the team, scored in the 72nd minute for the only goal it needed. But it got another, scoring in the 88th minute on a rebound of a shot that goalkeeper Ben Lundt had tipped off the crossbar.

City SC also lost center back Joakim Nilsson to what may have been another hamstring injury in the first half.

City SC hasn’t scored since Eduard Lowen converted a free kick 15 minutes into the game with Seattle on March 15. That’s been 345 minutes without a goal. The team was shut out eight times all of last season and could conceivably catch that before the start of May this year.

It looked like City SC would take the lead in the 16th minute when Klauss fed the ball to a charging Conrad Wallem racing down the right wing and his shot from 11 yards got past SKC keeper John Pulskamp but caught the far post, bounced across the face of the goal and away. It was another golden chance for City SC that it couldn’t finish.

SKC got the ball in to City SC’s box in the 24th minute but got nothing out of it because of an offside call. But amid that, Nilsson went down in the box holding his left leg and, after being checked by trainers, got up and, limping, went straight to the dressing room.

It’s just one more tough break for the Swedish center back, who missed most of City SC’s first season because of a knee injury suffered in a game with the Swedish national team before he joined City SC. Then last season, he missed part of the season after he needed a second operation to clean up his knee, then hurt his hamstring twice last season, and was so desperate in a search for solutions that he had his wisdom teeth pulled hoping that would help. Then this season, he looked forward to start a season not coming off an operation and fully healthy and then injured his tibial plateau, not connected to his previous knee troubles, in the team’s final preseason game, which kept him out of the first three games.

Tomas Ostrak came on for Nilsson and City SC rearranged its formation, dropping Wallem back into the left back spot and moving Kyle Hiebert from left back to left center back.

SKC had just two shots in the first half, only one necessitating a save by Ben Lundt, who made his fourth start in goal in place of the injured Roman Burki.

Though coach Olof Mellberg downplayed it in his news conference on Thursday, he started most of the combination that was dangerous in the final 23 minutes of the Austin game, with Klauss making his first start since the season’s third match and Celio Pompeu making his first start of the season.

Cedric Teuchert, returning from being out with a hamstring injury, was on the bench to start the game, along with Simon Becher. Those two, along with Emil Jaaskelainen, who was called up from City2 on a short-term loan before the game. Becher came on as a sub in the 65th minute and Teuchert in the 80th minute.