SEATTLE – As Paul Rothrock stood in front of the media following arguably the worst performance in Seattle Sounders history, he did his best to find answers to explain what just happened.
Always thoughtful, Rothrock asked to be judged by how he and his teammates responded to Thursday’s humiliating 5–1 loss to the Portland Timbers. He admitted the Sounders didn’t play up to their own standard, how each and every player needs to hold themselves accountable and even alluded to a lack of fight that has almost always been taken as a given in this rivalry.
What really stuck, though, was the sense of embarrassment.
“We’re sorry to the fans for coming out tonight,” he said. “It’s really hard watching people walk up the stairs way before the game was over. But I don’t blame them either, given how we played tonight.”
Losing to the Timbers is not exactly a new feeling for the Sounders, especially and perplexingly at home. The Sounders have beaten the Timbers at Lumen Field just once in the regular season since 2017. But this really was a new low.
In the 50-year history of this rivalry, the Timbers had never beaten the Sounders by four goals. The Sounders had never allowed five, and this was the first time they had even allowed as many as four at Lumen Field during the MLS era.
It wasn’t just the goals, either. The Timbers outdueled the Sounders 55–33, which included an astounding 81% of headers. As the game started to spiral out of control about 10 minutes into the second half, the Sounders seemingly had no answer. There was no “message-sending” tackle, no interest in holding up play, no ability to adapt to a game plan that seemed to catch the Sounders off guard.
“They felt dangerous on the counter every time,” Rothrock said. “We weren’t winning our duels in critical areas. We had very few guys put in a hard tackle on anyone in a rivalry game. We did not show up tonight the way that we needed to.”
Making this all the more frustrating was the environment heading into the match.
Much has been said about the energy in Seattle during the World Cup. The Sounders could be accused of not doing enough to capture that in the buildup to this game, but they did bring in more than 35,000 fans, their biggest crowd for a regular-season game in about two years. The club had also chosen to use the occasion of the rivalry to induct the Kasey Keller, Sigi Schmid and Jimmy Gabriel into the Eternal Sounders Circle of Legends.
Standing on the field at pregame, I could feel a genuine buzz in the air.
There were moments when it seemed like the Sounders might be able to capture some of that. Rothrock appeared to score the opening goal in the 5th minute, only for the assistant referee to correctly flag him offside. Even after the Timbers scored, the Sounders immediately answered with a couple of good chances. But it went downhill quickly from there.
Between the 29th and 79th minutes, the Sounders didn’t generate a single high-quality chance or even force James Pantemis into a save as the Timbers stretched their lead from 1–0 to 4–0.
What’s particularly galling about this performance is that it illustrated a kind of low that was presumably below the Sounders’ floor. The one commonality throughout Schmetzer’s tenure was that effort and pride were taken as givens. To just get on the field meant that those characteristics had been proven.
But the Sounders showed that nothing can be taken for granted. All prior assumptions need to be reconsidered
“Zero excuses for that performance,” a seemingly shell-shocked Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer said. “Just not good enough. I’ll add, me too because I got to own that. That’s the worst loss we’ve faced. It wears on me.”
There is still more than half of a season left to play. For as bad as this performance was, the Sounders have also demonstrated genuine competence. This is still the same team that has beaten the San Jose Earthquakes and Vancouver Whitecaps four times this season.
To Rothrock’s point, what matters is how the Sounders respond.
Snyder Brunell may have had the worst game of his still very young professional life. The promising 19-year-old looked downright lost at times. But he also suffered a hyper-extended elbow and tried to play through it. Unlike many of the veterans, Brunell chose to meet the press after the game.
As much as anyone, he seemed to understand what it will take to get past the worst loss of his career.
“We definitely need to reflect and make sure that this never happens again,” he said. “This was embarrassing towards the fans, the club, Washington.
“We do have a chance to make sure that when we go over there to Portland, we take advantage of the opportunity and we kill them over there.”
