SEATTLE — At this point, it has been well documented that the Seattle Sounders have been among the best teams in the league over the last few months. For all that success, though, there were still some doubts.
Heading into Saturday’s match against the Houston Dynamo, the Sounders had not beaten a team in the Top 5 of the Western Conference standings in the regular season, going 0-4-4 in those matches. Somewhat oddly, they had also struggled to hold late one-goal leads at home.
The Sounders’ 1-0 win over the Dynamo wasn’t exactly pretty and certainly won’t put to rest most of the lingering doubts about this team, but it was undeniably a step in the right direction. Not only were the Dynamo the No. 5 team in the West — allowing the Sounders to leapfrog them in the standings — but it was the sort of grind-it-out victory that they had previously struggled to complete, most recently in their previous home game against the San Jose Earthquakes when they surrendered an 89th minute equalizer.
“That’s a big area of growth from game to game we had there,” Sounders midfielder Paul Rothrock said in the postgame locker room after scoring the game winner. “Credit to the guys who closed out the game. We worked on that at training this week, closing out a game 1-0. Amazing foresight by the coaches. It worked out.”
While a multi-goal victory would have obviously been good for the vibes as well as the blood pressure of just about everyone with a rooting interest in the Sounders, this kind of victory was arguably more important.
So much of success in sports is about confidence and the narrative athletes build about themselves. That’s very hard to quantify, but does often manifest itself in a team’s performance in close games. When the Sounders missed the playoffs in 2022, for instance, they went just 7-15-5 (.96 points per game) in matches decided by fewer than two goals. The win over the Dynamo improves the Sounders’ record to 8-5-8 (1.52 ppg) in one-goal games.
“Tonight the guys really bore down,” Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer said. “They defended well. I’d have loved to score that second goal; we were maybe a little too rushed but there were some exciting moments.
“The guys concentrated for that 93 minutes of the game. That’s the focus you need to have for critical games, down the stretch, in the playoffs. You can’t take one play off. Against San Jose, we took one play off and it wasn’t good timing. Tonight, they focused and were compact and made it difficult on Houston.”
The way the Sounders managed this game did show some real improvement. The Dynamo came out strong and put the Sounders on their heels, but never truly threatened. The Sounders turned the tides through defensive work, creating a turnover that helped set up their goal in the 22nd minute.
After some counter-pressing forced a throw-in, the Sounders pushed into the Dynamo penalty area with some interplay between Albert Rusnák and Jordan Morris. As Rusnák drove into the box, the ball deflected out to Rothrock who alertly hit his shot first-time, beating Steve Clark to the far post.
The Sounders were able to convert that into a steady stream of chances throughout the final 20-odd minutes of the first half.
The second half was not nearly as dynamic, but it was arguably even more effective. Although the Sounders yielded 69% possession to the Dynamo, they only allowed them to take two long-range shots that accounted for .05 expected goals combined. The Sounders allowed the Dynamo just nine total touches inside the penalty area and only one of them was a pass even ostensibly toward goal.
Performances like that tend to build confidence, especially handy as they head into a stretch with three more games against potential playoff opponents.
“I think we can beat anybody, I think we’re confident about that,” Rothrock said. “I think we play well when the chips are down and people are counting us out.”
