We don’t need to dwell on Cristian Roldan’s mistake in Kansas City. Blip happens. That was only Seattle’s first goal allowed from a mistake this year in MLS (yes Opta tracks this as “Errors Lead to Goal”). But how that event went down in particular does serve to highlight a notable area of of imbalance in the squad's game this year: capitalizing on mistakes.
We joke about Joao Klauss’ gifted goals tally in 2023 for St. Louis City's inaugural season but an important truth is he did also put those opportunities away when they appeared and he had to be in the right place at the right time to do it. That ability to ruthlessly sniff out and punish a bad moment from the opposition is part of what made his “Designated Player” title mean something. It's an ability sorely missing from this Seattle team's ongoing repertoire.
Punditry's tired tread of the Sounders lacking a “game-breaker” as a derogatory statement about their ceiling is to say Seattle is missing a player who can just take over a game and win it single-handedly. While that is certainly one way to do it, most teams don't have that and that frame is a fundamental misunderstanding of how this team operates or will operate in the near future. At least for now, those kinds of players are both outside the transfer budget of this ownership group and outside the philosophy of this coach. "When pigs fly" so-to-speak.
Stylistically for Brian Schmetzer it’s probably more productive to think of an ideal “game-breaker” as someone who when presented with an opportunity can decisively take advantage of it just as Dejan Joveljić did, and frankly has done, over and over again against Sounders. Over the last five years all four of Jovelic’s goals against Sounders, including the goal to keep them out of MLS Cup in 2024, were the result of a Sounders flub. All four.
Across two legs, Tigres’ Nahuel Guzman experienced multiple “uh-oh” moments where the ball unexpectedly fell to a Sounders player’s boot in proximity to the 18-yard box and they didn’t make him pay. In the 30th minute of Leg 1 in Mexico the ball fortuitously dropped to Jordan Morris with Albert Rusnák close by and just one Tigres defender between them and the goal, and ultimately nothing came of it because he decided to take the next pass. In the 36th minute of Leg 2 Guzman passed it straight to Rusnák and again, instead of just shooting himself on the spot he passed into coverage.
These are the Klauss-ish moments that loom large as possibly delivering the difference in that series had they simply been more alive to the opportunity. Tigres’ first goal in Mexico took advantage of a lucky bounce off the heel of a defender. They very well could have logged two goals from a Sounders mistake following Lainez fishing for Nouhou in the box and earning a PK that luckily for Seattle went wanting. Either way, the ability to immediately punish defensive mistakes in or near the box ended up being a key aspect of Tigres’ run to the Concacaf Champions Cup final against both Sounders and Nashville.
Talk has recently sparked of what summer activity is called for given the current low-scoring state of affairs. I tend to think the team already has the firepower it needs in this area, and the underlying numbers support this, and that rather the deficiency is in their mindset by design. Selfishness simply isn’t a trait this group select for.
I'd say a more likely scenario for materializing a successful “game-breaker” in a Sounders FC jersey this season is encouraging someone who can intuit when to confidently toss the game plan and improvise to meet the moment at hand. You can probably think of any number of four or five guys that are candidates to take on this mantle. Knowing when to go for it defined Clint Dempsey as iconic. The leaders of the team need to be laying an active claim on that legacy.
Following the disappointing result in Kansas City while reflecting on whether they could have done more to seal three points, Schmetz assessed the team was “not being clinical enough. Not being clever enough. Paul Rothrock, you know, has given us a couple of penalties. Could he cut the ball back behind his standing leg and earn a penalty? It’s hard to win on the road.”
