SEATTLE — Every match provides an opportunity to learn something about the Seattle Sounders. I’d argue that’s especially true in times like this when there’s fixture congestion and a fair amount of rotation. Say what you will about the relative values of the Leagues Cup and U.S. Open Cup, but when these added games are coming against Liga MX opponents I think we also learn more than we do if they’re against lower-division teams.
Through three Phase One matches, the Sounders are showing they’re as deep as many of us claimed at the start of the year.
After securing a come-from-behind, 2-1 win over Club Tijuana on Wednesday, the Sounders were left as the only team in the tournament to win all three of their matches. They did this while scoring a tournament-high 11 goals, posting a tournament-best +9 goal difference and getting goal contributions from 13 different players.
The Sounders managed that while making multiple changes to the starting lineup in each match, including seven between the Santos Laguna and Tijuana matches. In total, 18 players got at least one start during the stretch.
“I feel like the Club World Cup put us in a scenario where we were playing some really good teams and it made us raise our standard to a really high level,” Sounders forward Danny Musovski said. “We’re seeing that playing against teams that aren’t at those top levels. To be able to produce on offense like that is definitely part of it.”
Once again, the Sounders didn’t make life easy on themselves but they did ultimately come through. After dominating most of the first half, they seemed to get a needed breakthrough when they were awarded a penalty off a handball. The normally reliable Albert Rusnák hit his penalty off the post, and just a couple minutes later Tijuana took the lead on a well-taken chance after the Sounders failed to clear their lines defensively.
Although the Sounders had faced varying degrees of adversity during their first two Leagues Cup matches, this was easily the most acute. After looking like the tournament’s best team, they were suddenly 45 minutes from elimination.
“Albert’s penalty kick miss certainly changed the game and gave them life,” Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer said in the postgame press conference. “A lot of teams would have folded. But our team doesn’t fold, our team doesn’t quit, our team can overcome adversity and persevere and survive.”
An ability to overcome a setback like that is becoming a bit of a theme for the Sounders. As impressive as they’ve looked while going 6-0-3 in the nine games they’ve played since the end of the Club World Cup, they’ve allowed the first goal in four of those matches. In three of those, they’ve come back to take the lead and this was their second come-from-behind win during that stretch.
The true mark of a serious cup contender isn’t how good they look when things are going their way, but how they’re able to regain the momentum when something goes wrong.
Against Tijuana, the gut punch came right before halftime.
The Sounders wasted little time applying pressure once they returned. They were just barely denied the equalizer in the 47th minute after Jorge Hernandez came up with a big save after Reed Baker-Whiting played in Osaze De Rosario, and some last-minute defending was all the prevented Obed Vargas from scoring a little later.
The breakthrough came in the 56th minute on a sequence that started with De Rosario fighting off his defender to win a 50-50 ball in the channel. Ryan Kent eventually got it out on the wing, beat his man to the end line and floated a cross to De Rosario, who overpowered his mark for the header.
The Sounders thought they had the go-ahead goal just a few minutes later after some nice interchange at the top of the box ended with Rusnák passing the ball into the net off a Kent feed, only for the offside flag to disallow it (the fifth goal the Sounders have had waved off this tournament).
It took a little while longer than anyone would have liked, but the winner did arrive. In the 88th minute, Jesús Ferreira sent an out-swinging corner into the box where Cristian Roldan headed it toward goal and Danny Musovski powered it in.
The Sounders now wait to see who they play in the quarterfinals, which will resume in about two weeks.
They’ll likely be short-handed — both Rusnák and Kent left this game with hamstring injuries — but that’s sort of been the norm for the past few months. Despite missing Jordan Morris for most of the year and playing extended stretches without Jackson Ragen, Stefan Frei and Yeimar Gomez Andrade, among others, the Sounders have been playing at a 70-point and 73-goal pace since early April.
Their depth surely has its limits — and it would be nice if they stopped trying to stress test that — but this is a team that is proving to be equal parts deep, resilient and talented. It will be exciting to see what they can do.
