LOS ANGELES — Having lost to LAFC six straight times — including all four of their meetings this year — and going winless against them in 10 straight, it was definitely a little tempting to assume the Seattle Sounders were simply due.
Especially in sports, there is no such thing as inevitable. All streaks will invariably end, yes, but they don’t happen by accident or dumb luck. They end when one team finally figures out a way to change it.
The Sounders found their way on Saturday.
Despite missing two virtually guaranteed starters in Nouhou and Paul Rothrock and falling behind 1-0, the Sounders turned in one of their gutsiest and hard-fought performances of the season to get back to the Western Conference finals for the first time since 2020 with a 2-1 extra time win over LAFC.
“Obviously we would have loved to have beaten them this year during the regular season, to get a shot at winning a trophy in Leagues Cup or U.S. Open Cup, but it’s always a tough game in the playoffs,” Sounders midfielder Cristian Roldan told Sounder at Heart after the game. “For us to be able to to get this win, get the monkey off our back is so satisfying and I’m just proud of the group. Our coaching staff had a great plan moving forward and then we executed and had a great mentality going into the game.”
A big part of that plan was somewhat forced by the absences of Nouhou and Rothrock. The Sounders have played in a 4-2-3-1 formation in almost every game this year, but have tinkered around with three-centerback sets on occasion. One of those times was in a 2-2 tie against the Houston Dynamo, a game in which the Sounders started slowly but were able to erase a 2-0 halftime deficit.
Despite the mixed performance, Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer said it was in the process of studying what worked and what didn’t that made him believe it was the best way to counteract LAFC’s strengths.
In the previous meetings with the Sounders, LAFC had been happy to swap possession in order to create counter-attacking opportunities. Repeatedly, they had succeeded by putting numbers behind the ball and then being lethal on the rare chance they got into the open field.
Although the Sounders again finished with the possession advantage in this meeting, they were much more careful about drawing their line of confrontation deeper in their own end than they had in any game over the last five months, and took particular care of how they handled turnovers when they invariably happened. Whenever an LAFC attacker got into space, they were almost always greeted by two defenders who were able to shut down the danger. In the rare instances where players were left isolated, they were as sharp as they’ve ever been. Denis Bouanga, one of the league’s most aggressive dribblers, was successful on just 1 of 10 attempts in this game. Olivier Giroud, the legendary France forward, was held to just one shot and just four touches in the box.
“I think you could look around, I think every single player had a good game,” Sounders forward Jordan Morris said. “Everyone had the right mentality.”
The Sounders have always been one of the best defensive teams, though. What really stood out in this game was their willingness to do the little things that often are the difference in tightly contested games. In the 6th minute, it was Reed Baker-Whiting taking a foul in his own end to break up a counter. In overtime, Yeimar Gomez Andrade took a yellow card when he sort of pushed Baker-Whiting back onto the field while he was dealing with cramps in order to assure play wasn’t restarted before a replacement could enter.
There were countless other examples of little bits of what people often call “shit-housery.” On more than one occasion this year, Schmetzer has lamented that his players often don’t like to engage in that stuff on account of being “too nice.” That was not a problem this time.
“It’s just the the desire to win, and doing everything that you can, including those little things,” Sounders goalkeeper Stefan Frei said after making nine saves and facing 27 shots. “I don’t think that’s dirty. I think that’s just smart.
“Maybe that’s just some some experience that we’ve gained over the last five, six times we’ve run into them. All those little things they add up, especially in the span of 120 minutes.”
For all that effort, it can’t be ignored that LAFC still managed to score first. On one of the rare occasions they were able to gain a numerical advantage on a counter-attack, Ryan Hollingshead finished off a Mateusz Bogusz cross. Normally, that would be that. No team has been better when playing with a lead than LAFC, who had gone 30-2-1 across all competitions when scoring first this year.
The Sounders were undeterred. They continued to press and for the next nine minutes they didn’t allow LAFC to have a single touch in their attacking half. The pressure ultimately led to the equalizer when Obed Vargas’ cross was deflected into the goal by Maxime Chanot.
To pull out the win, though, they needed a bit more. That was provided by Morris. The striker has been often criticized for his performance in the biggest games. Even as he’s enjoyed his most prolific scoring season of his career, Morris had failed to score in any of his nine appearances against teams above the Sounders in the Western Conference standings.
But in the 109th minute against the Sounders’ biggest bogey team, Morris worked himself free off a recycled corner. After Cristian Roldan kept the play alive by cutting in front of a defender to punch the ball into the box and Georgi Minoungou fought off Kei Kamara to get the ball free, Morris shielded his defender, shaped his body and got off a clean strike from a tough angle. Legendary goalkeeper Hugo Lloris could only watch as it curled inside the near post, under the crossbar, and struck the back of the net.
As big of a hurdle LAFC represented, there’s an arguably bigger one awaiting in the next round. The Galaxy have one of the most explosive offenses in MLS history and have scored an eye-popping 15 goals in their first three playoff games. But this year has been full of challenges. What’s one more?
“The mentality of the group is we never quit,” Schmetzer said. “We never give up. Guys that want to even think about giving up, they’re no longer with us. It’s just the overall spirit of the group. They understand that coming in.
“They understand that it’s their team. It’s not my team, it’s not Adrian’s team, it’s their team and they have to stick together. And as a collective, they can do great things.”
