Already off to their best-ever start to a season and facing what has been the league’s worst team through the the first couple of months, the Seattle Sounders seemed to be in optimal position to improve their lot on Saturday.
When Paul Rothrock scored less than two minutes into their road match against Sporting KC, the result seemed to be virtually secured. In the midst of a six-game losing streak, Sporting KC’s body language screamed “here we go again.”
But instead of an easy win to set up what promises to be a massive homestand against three potential Western Conference contenders, the Sounders were instead forced to settle for a frustrating 1–1 tie that most agreed felt more like a loss.
“I think for the standard we hold ourselves to, we felt like we lost two points today,” Rothrock said after the game. “That’s no disrespect to Sporting KC. We just had the chances to win the game today and we blew it.”
Through their first eight games, the Sounders had just about perfected the art of doing just enough, especially on the road. In six of those games, they had scored first and had never surrendered those leads. They had come into Kansas City having secured shutouts in four straight road games. While the Sounders’ play had hardly been perfect, they had largely avoided making mistakes.
Through the first 15 minutes of the KC match, things seemed to be playing out on a similar script. Following Rothrock’s goal – which itself came at the end of a 25-pass sequence – the Sounders continued to dominate the ball and came inches away from grabbing a second goal when Jesús Ferreira’s looping shot was narrowly saved off the crossbar.
Perhaps that early domination lulled the Sounders into a false sense of security.
In the 18th minute, the Sounders had possession in their own end with Sporting KC only applying minimal pressure. Cristian Roldan, who is usually very good about checking his shoulders, hit a soft pass toward goalkeeper Andrew Thomas apparently without realizing the Sporting KC forward Dejan Joveljić was nearby. The striker picked up the errant pass and hit his shot before Thomas could get fully set. Suddenly, the score was tied.
“Cristian knows better,” Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer said. “I’m holding him accountable. He’s holding himself accountable in front of his teammates. But that can’t happen.”
The Sounders spent the better part of the next 70 minutes dominating possession and peppering Sporting KC goalkeeper Stefan Cleveland with shots. By the end of the game, the Sounders had fired off a season-high 26 shots and forced Cleveland into eight saves. All but three of those shots came from within the penalty area and six came from within or just outside the six-yard box.
The Sounders also set a season high with 30 entries into the Sporting KC box – while allowing just five – while having 81% of the field tilt. In many ways, it was the Sounders’ most dominant performance of the season. But with Sporting KC mostly content to drop numbers behind the ball, most of those sequences were against a set defense and ended in frustration. While the Sounders did a decent job of forcing Sporting KC to defend in their box, they didn’t do enough to force them to defend in space. Although Sporting KC has one of the league's worst defenses, the Sounders allowed the game to become predictable.
“We just didn’t have the quality in the final third,” Schmetzer said.
The dropped points are hardly disastrous. Thanks to other top teams in the Supporters’ Shield race also dropping points, the Sounders did no worse than keep pace.
But the margins in MLS are impossibly thin. A win would have pushed the Sounders into third in the Western Conference on raw points and into third in the Supporters’ Shield standings on points per game. This is the kind of road game that can make or break a Shield race. Early as it may be, this was the Sounders’ chance to make a move.
"The players have made a statement about being a serious Supporters’ Shield contender," Schmetzer noted. "You can’t just let points slip away like this."
The Sounders now turn their attention to a stretch of three home games in the span of eight days, all of which are against Western Conference opponents. If they can sweep those games, won’t be so frustrating. But that's a tall order.
"That will test our mental toughness," Schmetzer said about the upcoming games.
