TUKWILA — Seattle Sounders coach Sigi Schmid, on May 11: “It was just one of those days.”
Schmid on Monday: “It’s just one of those things.”
In the first case, Schmid was talking about his team’s 5-0 loss at New England. In the second, he was talking about Seattle’s 3-0 home loss to the Los Angeles Galaxy.
Schmid and the Sounders returned to training Tuesday hoping they can react to their latest embarrassing performance as well as they did to that earlier one.
Seattle had gone into New England riding the wave of a first-place ranking and five-game winning streak. Then the Revolution scorched them for four first-half goals before going on to hand Seattle its worst Major League Soccer defeat.
This time around, the Sounders went into the Galaxy match at the top of the MLS table and riding a six-game home winning streak. Then the visitors scored three goals in the first 36 minutes and handed Seattle its second-worst MLS home loss.
The similarities were not lost on the Sounders.
“We’ve been here before,” veteran defender Zach Scott said. “We’ve gotten slaughtered in New England and come back and put a pretty good streak together. … There’s a quick turnaround to a Saturday game, so we’ll kind of get on the horse and get back at it.”
The Sounders followed their loss to the Revolution with a 4-0-1 run over their next five league matches.
“What happened before we got on that streak was at New England and that tough loss,” goalkeeper Stefan Frei said. “Obviously now it hurts with a tough loss — and especially at home — but you’ve got to show character and bound back. There are a lot of games coming really quickly. We need to dig deep and have a good week of practice — not even a whole week — but get better and hopefully we can get on another streak”.
Interestingly, the Sounders bounced back from their loss to the Revs with a 1-0 win over the San Jose Earthquakes. Now once again, the Quakes appear as the next opponent on the schedule: a 7:30 p.m. Saturday match at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
And while the Sounders hope history repeats, Schmid stressed Tuesday that the ideal situation would be avoiding the need to bounce back at all.
“You don’t want to have defeats like that,” he said. “You’ve always got to be a tough team to beat. Every time you step on the field you’ve got to have that mentality. The D.C. game is a good example where we won at D.C. (1-0). We didn’t maybe play the best soccer in that game, but we were a tough team to beat. And so sometimes the soccer is going to click or not click due to one thing or another, but you’ve still got to be a tough team to beat.”
Added time
The Sounders hoped to have a Tuesday update on defender Chad Marshall’s back injury, however no results were publicly announced. … Schmid said he expects left back Leo Gonzalez to be available Saturday. … Reserve goalkeeper Marcus Hahnemann will fly with the Blue Angels on Wednesday as part of Seafair. … San Jose forward Yannick Djalo was voted MLS player of the week after recording a goal and two assists in the Quakes’ 5-1 win over the Chicago Fire on July 23.
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