All losses are not created equal. Especially in MLS where there remains a high degree of parity, it can reasonably be assumed that even the best teams will lose somewhere between five-10 games. It’s how and when those losses occur that define how successful a season is.
The Seattle Sounders seem to be choosing the worst times and ways to lose them.
Over the last four months or so, the Sounders have gone a perfectly respectable 15-7-5 (the equivalent of 1.85 points per game). They’ve averaged 1.59 goals per game and scored multiple goals 16 times during that stretch. It’s a large enough sample size that calling them a “pretty good team that scores at a respectable clip” feels pretty accurate.
But each of those seven losses have been painful for different reasons in large part because a common theme seems to emerge.
The 1-0 loss to the Portland Timbers on Saturday was almost perfectly emblematic of their struggles.
The Sounders came into the game against their biggest rivals looking for a bounce back after getting eliminated from the U.S. Open Cup earlier in the week. Instead, they turned in one of their most frustrating performances of the season, allowing the Timbers to register just their fifth shutout of the season without really forcing goalkeeper Maxime Crepeau to do much work.
“You have to score to win, right?” Sounders midfielder Josh Atencio asked in the postgame press-conference. “We’ll have to see what went wrong on those chances. We got on the end of a lot of set pieces. Had some good combinations out wide. But we have to create more chances. We have to score goals.”
Although the Sounders generated 14 shots — 10 of them from inside the penalty area — only two of them were on frame and only three came from open play. The dangerous moments they did create from open play were almost exclusively the product of aggressive dribbling, not the kind of intricate passing or transition moments where they have often thrived.
The Timbers never looked particularly interested in coming out of their defensive shell, but dropped their lines of confrontation even deeper after they scored in the 55th minute. According to the Twitter account MLSStat, the Timbers average defensive action was 30.7 yards from their own goal, the third deepest line of confrontation of any Sounders opponent this year.
While the Sounders have mostly been a pretty good offensive team, it’s defenses like this that are giving them tons of trouble. Over their last 16 games, for instance, they’ve been shut out four times. Three of those are against LAFC, who authored the only two deeper lines of confrontation, and this game against the Timbers.
While those aren’t the only teams the Sounders faced who wanted to defend deep — which includes at least a handful of wins — it does suggest an obvious weakness. If the Sounders can’t score early or break through on a set piece, opposing teams are happy to take their chances.
While players like Paul Rothrock and then Georgi Minoungou were able to put Timbers defenders into scramble mode on several occasions, either the runners weren’t there to take advantage or the final ball was a little lacking. Similarly, Jordan Morris had at least two good looks off of set pieces, but mis-timed one and hit another right at Crepeau.
“We created some chances, put them under pressure, but I wish we put them under more pressure in the first half,” Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer said. “Paul got down the left. Are we ready? Do we believe he’s going to get in behind? On the road, you have to make the most of the few chances you’re going to get. We could have done a better job.”
Defensively, the Sounders mostly bottled up the highly explosive Timbers offense, who had their second lowest expected goals output since the last meeting of these two teams. Evander, a darkhorse MVP candidate, had just one shot from open play — which was blocked — and had limited influence on the game … aside from one big moment.
In the 55th minute, the Timbers were able to break through the Sounders’ counter-press to create a transition chance with Evander right in the middle. As Evander collected the ball around midfield, he put Juan David Mosquero into some space. Mosquera — who had been having a bit of a nightmare game defensively — took a couple of touches before Nouhou finally decided to close him down just as he was getting ready to shoot. Nouhou deflected the shot some, but that only served to give it just enough dip to be out of goalkeeper Andrew Thomas’ reach. It was the only glaring defensive misstep of the night.
That too underscores one of the persistent problems the Sounders have faced. Too often, they need to be almost perfect defensively to win. Aside from that 10-day stretch in June when they got results in three straight games after falling behind, the Sounders have gained a point from a losing position just one other time this season.
It’s easy to overreact to a loss like this one, and it doesn’t mean the Sounders are necessarily bad. It’s just that the losses they’re taking — especially in the most emotional games — all look eerily similar.
The loss dropped the Sounders all the way to eighth in the Western Conference, albeit still just four points out of fourth. Of their final seven games, five are against teams currently in playoff position. The margins for making this a successful season are getting very thin and the Sounders’ deficiencies are only becoming more obvious.
But they’ll also have chances to turn that round, starting with Saturday’s road game against the Columbus Crew. They don’t necessarily need to win, but grabbing a result would do wonders to alter the narrative and vibes.
“I think the guys have a good attitude going into the locker room,” Atencio said. “We’re obviously mad, but a lot of the rhetoric is being positive. Shit like this happens and we have to move forward. We have to learn from it and take it into next week. That’s now the most important game and we’re going to do everything we can to take points.”
