In the Seattle Sounders’ 17 MLS seasons, all but two have ended in some level of disappointment and all but four have ended a little earlier than had been hoped. That is simply the nature of professional sports.
But rarely, if ever, has the end come quite as unexpectedly or with such a thud.
“This is the toughest loss that I’ve experienced at this club,” Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer said in the postgame press conference. “This one was tough. We let it slip away.”
It was not that the Sounders were some kind of overwhelming favorite against Minnesota United, a team who had earned home-field advantage by claiming more points, had a superior goal-difference and was better almost across the board statistically during the regular season.
No, the sense of almost shock that seemed to be hanging over the Sounders in the aftermath of their Game 3 elimination on Saturday had almost entirely to do with the way the best-of-3 series had played out. The Sounders outscored Minnesota 7-5 on aggregate, had about twice as much xG and generated 12 “big chances” compared to the Loons’ seven.
That was particularly true in the decisive match. The Sounders jumped out to a 2-0 lead inside 10 minutes behind a spectacular goal by Albert Rusnák and an opportunistic one from Danny Musovski. Even after Joaquin Pareyra pulled one back with a spectacular free kick in the 19th minute, the Sounders seemed to be well in control, especially after Joseph Rosales was sent off in the 41st minute after head-butting Jesús Ferreira.
Minnesota is not a team built for comebacks. They had not erased a two-goal deficit to earn a point since 2020 and were just 2-14-2 when trailing at the half in two seasons under manager Eric Ramsay. In their entire 10-year MLS existence, they had only scored one goal in a game after going down to 10 men (way back in 2018).
To the Sounders’ credit, they never really took their foot off the pedal and were looking like the team far more likely to score next. It felt almost inevitable in the 54th minute when Cristian Roldan got free in the box and cut it back to Rusnák all alone at the penalty spot for the type of chance the Sounders effectively live to create. But Rusnák — one of the most technical players in the league — somehow put it off the near post with Minnesota goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair fully committed to the other side.
It proved costly. Minnesota equalized in the 62nd minute when Jefferson Diaz somehow got himself open at the back post off a throw-in despite the Sounders have the numerical advantage and two players being close enough to him to make a play. They then took the lead in the 71st minute when leading goal-scorer Anthony Markanich was left unmarked at the back post on a corner kick, again despite the Sounders having a numerical advantage.
While such comebacks are unprecedented for the Loons, it did fit a bit of a pattern for the Sounders. This was the third time this year the Sounders had squandered a multi-goal lead — the same number of times as in 2010-2024 combined, and never before in a playoff game — and they had been particularly soft on set pieces, where they had allowed 12 goals after allowing just four last year.
“It doesn’t feel right,” Rusnák said, calling his miss the “easiest chance” had had all season. “We went a man up, had control of the game and somehow found ourselves down 3-2 and fighting just to equalize. We are a really good team. When you go a man up with a lead, you can’t let them score two goals.”
As they’ve shown throughout the year, though, the Sounders weren’t ready to go down without a fight. After generating several tantalizing looks, the Sounders finally got the equalizer in the 88th minute when Cristian Roldan made a clever flick to Jordan Morris off a Rusnák corner. As he did a year ago on his overtime winner against LAFC in the Western Conference semifinal a year ago, Morris converted.
Before play had even restarted, Schmetzer rode the momentum and made one the boldest choices he’s ever made in a game by swapping veteran goalkeeper Stefan Frei for Andrew Thomas with the expectation the game would go to penalties.
The move worked about as well as anyone could have hoped, and gave the Sounders ample opportunity to salvage the result they had all but tried to give away. Thomas certainly did his part, even after dislocating his left pinkie while making a diving effort on Pereyra’s opening effort (which went wide).
After a lengthy pause to heavily tape him and jamming his finger back into place, Thomas made two saves. Each gave the Sounders an opportunity to seal the win with a successful attempt. First up, Obed Vargas perfectly executed a stutter-step approach that sent St. Clair the wrong way, only for his shot to clang off the post. Next, Osaze De Rosario confidently stepped up, gave St. Clair a bit of a smirk after the goalkeeper received a yellow card for incessantly chattering and doing everything he could to delay the kick … and then had his attempt saved.
The final nail came when St. Clair converted his spot kick and Thomas slammed his off the crossbar, almost impossibly the fifth time the Sounders had hit the woodwork in their 15 penalty attempts during the series.
“It’s a game of really fine margins and we lost the margins tonight,” said Sounders midfielder Paul Rothrock, who is now out of contract and may have played his final game for his boyhood club. “Where we’ve come from as a team, I feel like we were the better team. Sometimes sports just go that way.
“In our hearts, we were the better team but we’re not moving on and that hurts. They found a way to get the better of us this year. That’s 10 months of work that’s just gone in a few moments.”
What will leave a lasting impression about this loss isn’t just the missed opportunities, it’s that this really had the feel of a team that had another special run in them. They had already gone on one magical journey this year, winning Leagues Cup with a bunch of reserves playing key roles. Healthy as they’ve been all year, the Sounders seemed to be hitting their stride down the stretch.
After a brief hiccup following the Leagues Cup win, the Sounders ended the season on a seven-game unbeaten run (if you count the shootouts as ties, as the record books technically do) in which they outscored opponents 13-8. That’s their longest-ever season-ending unbeaten streak, even including the two seasons that ended with them winning MLS Cup.
Although they had struggled against Minnesota this year, they had seemingly figured them out. Prior to this series, Minnesota had only given up as many as three goals in a game four times this year, had only given up four goals in a game once, had never allowed seven goals over any two-game stretch and had only even allowed that many over three games once before. The Sounders led for 140 minutes and only trailed for 16 during the three games.
None of that really mattered.
“This one hurts,” Rothrock said. “In my head, we were going all the way. It’s going to take a while for it to set in that isn’t going to happen.”
The good news, if you can bring yourself to consider it, is that the Sounders seem well set up for the future. Unlike many of their other playoff teams, this does not feel like it was the culmination of years of building. Like every offseason, there will be some turnover. But there seems to be obvious succession planning in place at almost every spot and the core of the roster is still mostly in the primes of their careers. There’s no reason that a dramatic overhaul needs to happen in order for the Sounders to believe they can be in an even better spot at this point next year.
But that doesn’t really lessen the sting of this loss. The Sounders have rarely been more fun to watch than they were this year and they seemed to still have plausible paths to improving. This felt like it had the makings of a storybook season … until it didn’t.
“A lot of teams will say ‘We won Leagues Cup. A lot of teams would look at this season as a success,” Schmetzer said. “But the standard of our club is games like this don’t happen. We should be moving on. That’s on me, that’s on us. We have to accept that.”
