Heading into the Club World Cup break — and the unofficial midpoint of the season — the vibes surrounding the Seattle Sounders seem to be about as low as they’ve been all season.
The latest blow was a humbling 3-0 loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps on Sunday, in which the Sounders came out flat in the first half, eventually surrendered a goal and then compounded that by picking up two red cards in quick succession soon after the start of the second half. Although the Sounders looked spirited and energetic while playing down two men, the game effectively became unwinnable when Daniel Rios added the Whitecaps’ second goal in the 70th minute.
Losing on the road to the Supporters’ Shield leaders is, of course, not the problem here. The Whitecaps have lost just one MLS game all season and were on a 15-game unbeaten run across all competitions prior to their 5-0 loss to Cruz Azul a week earlier. They are a very good team, no question about that.
But the opponent the Sounders were facing was really only a shell of that team. The Whitecaps were missing nine players due to international duty — seven of them likely starters — and had just gone through a week in which they were barely able to train due to “gastrointestinal symptoms” that hit more than half of the players who were available. The Sounders should have been licking their chops at a chance to “get right” against a weakened opponent.
Instead, they never looked like a team who was intent on bossing the game.
Sure, the Sounders had plenty of possession and they generated a good chance in the 2nd minute when Alex Roldan got a clean look at a volley. But he badly mishit it and the Sounders’ next decent chance didn’t come until first-half stoppage time.
The Whitecaps, meanwhile, looked like a team who was perfectly comfortable sitting in a low block and breaking out whenever there was a chance to counter-attack. As it turned out, they were able to put out a perfectly MLS-quality starting lineup, full of players who had been regular contributors throughout the year. If they were feeling any lasting effects from their illnesses, they didn’t show it. Their goal in the 40th minute came off one of the rare instances where they applied some pressure higher up the field and wasted little time working the ball into dangerous parts of the field.
The Sounders looked a little better at the start of the second half, but undid that spectacularly when Nouhou got beat over the top, took a bad recovery angle and compounded the mistake by pulling down Mathias Laborda from behind. With no defenders between Laborda and goal, it was an easy red.
Just to put a cherry on the meltdown, Jon Bell’s feet got tangled with Emmanuel Sabbi just outside the penalty area on another ball over the top. I think that was a little more questionable of a red, but it was a position the Sounders shouldn’t have been in given the already tenuous game-state.
That the Sounders eventually surrendered two goals while playing a two men down wasn’t so much an indictment of anything they did from that point forward, but was entirely predictable.
Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer painted a postgame locker room that was “dejected” and admitted the performance was a “shot in the chin.” He also insisted that he felt they would recover and that he believed this had the potential to be a catalyst for a turnaround, similar to how the Sounders went 6-1-2 in the nine games immediately following their 3-0 loss to San Diego FC earlier this year.
He also acknowledged he’s growing a bit more worried about an inability to seize control of games. The Sounders have now been outscored 11-5 in their past six matches, have only scored more than one goal once during that time and have given up the first goal in three of those games. That’s not a recipe for success.
“It’s the general team defending along with not a lot of good attacking movements, rather than the two reds, that cause us to lose the game,” Schmetzer said. “We were playing too passively. We were the best defensive team last year and we’ve been giving up goals left and right. That has to stop.”
Just two weeks ago, the season outlook was feeling very different. The Sounders were coming off a 1-0 win over San Diego FC in which they didn’t necessarily play great, but found a way to pull out the result. They were six points from the top of the Western Conference, with a home game against a Minnesota United team who had never won at Lumen Field and a road game against a Whitecaps team that they knew was going to be short-handed.
But there was trouble brewing just beneath the surface. Yeimar, their most reliable defender, had gone out with a hamstring injury against FC Dallas. His absence was compounded when Kim Kee-hee went down with a calf injury against San Diego. Jackson Ragen was also just coming back from a hamstring injury of his own. All of that was in addition to Jordan Morris’ inability to stay on the field or for the Sounders to find a consistent attacking group.
Just to add a layer of complexity, the situation around the Club World Cup bonuses blew up over the last week. Sounders players had recently started to go public with some of their frustrations over what they perceived as the league dragging its feet over making an offer, and then pushed that to the forefront when they wore shirts that declared “Club World Ca$h Grab” during pregame before facing Minnesota. That situation continued to simmer this week and was a consistent talking point, culminating with news that the players had rejected an offer from the league.
As frustrating as the Minnesota loss was, the Whitecaps loss was a different level of embarrassment.
The players have openly stated that this is all contributing to a suboptimal environment, but it seems to be having a bigger impact than they had anticipated.
“Yeah it’s a distraction, but it’s part of the process, part of the job,” Sounders defender Kalani Kossa-Rienzi said, after turning in probably the most spirited performance of the day. “We have to figure out as a collective how to get through it, leave the politics out and just play. Sometimes things don’t go your way, there are two sides of the game and when we get on the field we have tune everything out, block out the noise and do our job and perform on the field.”
Suffice it to say, this is not the head space the Sounders want to be in as they head into the Club World Cup.
No one ever thought the Sounders were going to be serious contenders in a tournament that features some of the biggest and best clubs in the world, but I think most people were still looking forward to it. The players insist they still are. But short-handed and suddenly in arguably their worst form of the season is about as far from ideal as it gets.
“We’re going to treat this as a big experience because it is,” Schmetzer said. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to come to the stadium and enjoy a nice summer night, hopefully we’ll be competitive. I hope people show up. I hope people believe in the team.
“When you’re in a tough patch, when you’re not comfortable, when you have to make decisions that affect other people, leaders pull themselves up. That’s what I expect from everyone to try to come together and try to put together competitive performances and show we have the determination to be there.”
