Sometimes a result is just a result. That might be in a 5-2 win or it might be a 4-0 loss.
That’s not meant to diminish what happened to the Seattle Sounders on Wednesday when they were badly outplayed by LAFC. It’s more to point out that only time will tell how meaningful it was.
Knowing what I know today, I’m inclined not to think much of it.
What we know is that the Sounders are in the middle of playing three road games in the span of eight days. As a result, head coach Brian Schmetzer chose to rotate heavily. There were eight changes from Saturday’s 3-1 win over the Houston Dynamo, which included not even dressing veteran leaders Stefan Frei and Cristian Roldan.
LAFC, too, is in the middle of a three-game week, but they chose to make “only” five changes from their weekend game and admittedly fielded a lineup that looked on paper considerably closer to first-choice.
The performance showed it, too.
LAFC applied the most effective press the Sounders have faced all year, generated the most xG (2.2) of any Sounders opponent and could have easily scored a couple more goals if not for one goal being disallowed for offside and some other goal-line clearances.
Aside from a stretch between LAFC’s first goal in the 26th minute through halftime, the Sounders never really seemed to be in this game. They had two or three decent looks at goal — including Pedro de la Vega hitting an open header off the crossbar that would have sent the game into halftime tied 1-1 — but finished with a season-low tying .5 xG and actually looked worse going forward when they tried to open things up in the second half.
There was no question who looked and performed like the better team in this game.
“It’s not completely negative, but this one hurts for sure,” Sounders winger Paul Rothrock said. “It humbles us a little bit and we have to regroup.”
“We’ve got to take some good lessons. We’ll be better for this game.”
Those are all fair observations. The Sounders should be somewhat humbled. They clearly aren’t deep enough to roll out this much of a rotated lineup, on the road, against one of the top teams in the Western Conference and expect to be the better team.
On the same token, I think it can be tempting to take too much away from this result or to second-guess it too much.
Given the current injury situation, I’m inclined to believe this level of rotation was a practical necessity. If the coaches believed the best way to set up the Sounders for success was to keep a couple key starters at home and to limit others’ minutes, I’m inclined to trust them with the knowledge that this result was the possible cost.
Even then, I’ll note that a nearly identical lineup beat LAFC earlier this year 5-2, albeit at home and with the opponent more heavily rotated than they were this time. If anything, I think these two results merely showed us that we really don’t know what a potential playoff matchup between these teams will look like. Nothing particularly close to either team’s best XI has faced off against one another this year.
“I’m sure they felt the same thing in Seattle,” Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer said when comparing the two games. “The teams are evenly matched. It’s a good rivalry. We’ll try to move past this game quickly.”
I also don’t think this result diminishes what the Sounders did during the five-game unbeaten streak that was just ended.
During those five games, the Sounders were able to press effectively, defended in open play remarkably well and were able to generate loads of quality scoring chances. Many of the players who started against LAFC helped do all that, too.
I know it’s tempting to identify specific players who effectively created the fail point, but I’m not ready to go there either. Did the midfield of João Paulo and Danny Leyva looked particularly ill-suited to handle LAFC’s press? Sure. But that could have been mitigated with a more adept passer on the backline or attackers who were more useful in possession. Similarly, Jesús Ferreira struggled to make any sort of impact, but he wasn’t helped by a midfield who was largely disconnected. I was actually pretty pleased with how effective Osaze De Rosario was at getting into dangerous spots despite how isolated he was most of the game.
The biggest bright spot for me was Kalani Kossa-Rienzi, who was often left to defend Denís Bouanga in 1v1 situations and never looked out of his depth. He even managed to make a goal-line clearance on what would have been yet another goal.
As with any loss, there is always the potential that this could snowball. We’ve all seen that happen before.
But there’s also the potential that this proves to be a minor blip that is totally forgotten within a few weeks. If the Sounders can regroup and beat the Portland Timbers on Saturday, I think this game is virtually wiped clean.
“The scoreline isn’t something we’re proud of,” Schmetzer said. “No one wants to take four goals. But the expectation is that this group will have a good game plan in Portland and try to collect some points.”
