Jordan Morris ties MLS record for fastest goals

In the span of less than a minute, Jordan Morris turned Sunday’s match on its head. The Seattle Sounders left midfielder scored two goals just 58 seconds apart to turn a tense 1-0 lead into a commanding 3-0 lead. The Sounders went on to cruise to a 3-1 victory over Los Angeles FC.

In addition to setting a Sounders team record, Morris will now join 21 other players in MLS history who have scored a pair of goals about one minute apart.

As impressive as this feat was, I was curious how Morris’ goal holds up when the goals are broken down by the second. Watching Morris’ second goal, you can appreciate how difficult it would be to score any faster.

Unfortunately, the official MLS record book does not recognize how many seconds elapsed between goals. According MLS historian Rick Lawes, that’s because the league did not track statistics with that level of precision prior to about 10 years ago.

At least for the more recent goals, however, I was able to locate highlights and discovered that at least one of these players scored faster than Morris. Back in 2014, the Vancouver Whitecaps’ Pedro Morales scored two goals just 57 seconds apart.

I’m going to put an asterisk on Morales’ achievement, however, since the first of the two goals came on a penalty. Best I can tell, Morris’ goals are the two fastest from open play, since at least 2010.