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Roger Levesque scored two goals. Osvaldo Alonso scored his second goal in two matches. Erik Friberg finally put one in the back of the net. Most importantly, the 46,065 fans in attendance with huge grins on their faces after the Seattle Sounders beat the New York Red Bulls 4-2 after blowing a 2-0 lead.
The match was not always pretty. None of the goals were the product of impressive link-up play, and a couple of the Sounders' tallies were downright opportunistic. The way this season is going, though, it feels awful silly to focus on anything but the fact that this team scored four goals, a Sounders home record, and started the second half of the season with an entertaining match in front of the largest MLS crowd in their history.
Even in blowing a 2-0 lead, there were some things to really like. One, they built a 2-0 lead and refused to rest on it. Maybe that gave the Red Bulls the opening they needed to get back into it, but no one can fault the Sounders for backing off. Two, after blowing that lead, there was no panic. Sure, it took a few minutes to get settled, but the Sounders converted their first chance after the equalizer and quickly put the game away with as opportunistic goal as we've seen all year.
Basically, this was exactly the kind of match every Sounders fan should have been rooting for in this exact situation. A 2-0 win, for instance, may have been more satisfying for the hard-core among us. But let's be honest, this was not a match for the hard-core.
With a national TV audience watching (after the requisite delay because of the College World Series) and about 10,000 hope-to-be-return-customers in the house, a wide open game featuring lots of goals was exactly what was needed. And let's be honest, after a season full of 1-0 nail-biters, this was fun. And we deserve to have fun sometimes too.