Sometimes there’s games where nothing good happens, especially in Major League Soccer. In most ways, the Seattle Sounders should have won that match comfortably. Sporting KC hadn’t won since March 30th. SKC couldn’t even put out a lineup of 18 players. They didn’t have any strikers. But, it turns out that Johnny Russell guy is pretty good at soccer.

Winners

Kelvin Leerdam

Look, very little good happened in that match. Several Sounders players had their worst performance this season. But, one player who showed up to actually play was Kelvin Leerdam.

Leerdam was involved in both goals. First, he does this nasty turn before laying it off to Raul Ruidiaz. Second, he heads home Seattle’s second goal with the hopes of mounting a comeback that wasn’t to be. At the end of the match, Kelvin looked absolutely gassed. He left it all on the field, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough to get points from this match.

Not having to watch Fox Sports 1 anymore

Usually when people complain about the broadcast of a soccer game, I kind of just roll my eyes and think, “how bad can it be? I mean, really.” But the direction of this particular FS1 broadcast was absolutely horrendous. Generally, I have a lot of grace for broadcasters when it comes to analysis, so I don’t want to spend time hounding them too much, but two things about this broadcast were particularly jarring. First, there was a halftime segment dedicated to honoring Chad Marshall’s career. Except one of the commentators decided to give Chad a career grade of a “B or a B+”. Second, the broadcast was showing a replay during the Sounders second goal. They completely missed it. Didn’t show it live. Good job, good effort.

Health...lol jk

Just as things were looking up for the Sounders in terms of health, Kim Kee-hee has to be subbed off in the first half because of an injured leg. How serious his injury isn’t known at this time. But, there’s at least some good news... Gustav Svensson returned to the bench for this game, even though he didn’t sub on. Brian Schmetzer also said Victor Rodriguez should be back next week.

Losers

Defense

The Sounders have always prided themselves on being a strong defensive team that’s hard to score on. Well, against SKC, there really wasn’t anything about their defense that is worthy of taking pride from, especially in the first half. Losing your best defender early on certainly didn’t help, but Brad Smith and Roman Torres were particularly poor throughout the match. Oh, and everyone needs to atone for their sin on this goal.

Playing in Kansas

There’s something about playing in Kansas City that brings out the worst in the Sounders. Unless the Sounders end up playing SKC in KC during the playoffs (and let’s be honest, that would be a disaster given the start of the season for both teams), this will be the sixth straight year that Seattle leaves Kansas without a win. Hardly their worst performance there, though. If you remember way back to 2016, it was a defeat to SKC that sealed Sigi Schmid’s fate as the Sounders head coach. It was also the ground zero for the rock bottom start Seattle had in 2017. Last year they did get a draw, though.

There is a silver lining in losing to SKC. The Sounders tend to have an uptick in form after losing to KC. Hopefully that’s the case this year, as well.

Nico Lodeiro being suspended

Lodeiro picked up a pretty soft yellow card for a foul on Benny Feilhaber in the second half. That’s Nico’s fifth yellow card, which means he’ll miss the match next week against FC Dallas. Presumably, the SKC match will be his last match with the Sounders for about a month as he’s set to join Uruguay for the Copa America tournament. Not great!

Now it’s your turn. What are your Winners & Losers?