PORTLAND — In any stadium, against any opponent, what Sounders FC did Sunday afternoon would be impressive.
But to do it against a hated rival in one of the league’s most hostile environments? Well let’s just say there were a lot of smiling faces as AC/DC blared over the speakers in the visi
tors’ locker room at JELD-WEN Field.
In the second meeting of the season between Seattle and the Portland Timbers, who joined Major League Soccer this season, Sounders FC came away with a 3-2 victory after Fredy Montero twice erased second-half deficits with goals in the 57th and 74th minutes, then Osvaldo Alonso put Seattle on top for good in the 83rd minute, scoring on a penalty kick.
“With the game going how it did, us going down a goal, fighting back, going down a goal, fighting back, it just kept building and building and creating that drama to the very end,” said forward Roger Levesque. “And the good guys came out on top.”
Of course “good guys” is a subjective term, and for most of the 18,627 in attendance, Sounders FC players were anything but. And after settling for a disappointing tie against Portland in Seattle two months ago, sending those Timbers fans home unhappy was the perfect way to cap the first year of the rivalry for Sounders FC players.
“All the game I heard what (the Portland fans) said, but my job is to play for the Seattle Sounders,” said Montero, who was the subject of some of the harshest verbal attacks from the Timbers Army, the fan section behind the north goal. “I have many fans who support me and who are behind me. I feel so happy to be on this team and I’m so happy to be here.”
After a scoreless and at times sloppy first half, it was the Timbers fans that got to celebrate first after Portland took a 1-0 lead less than a minute into the second half. Kalif Alhassan made an impressive run down the right side, beating Seattle defender Tyson Wahl, then hit a low cross from close range that deflected off of Jeff Parke and into the net for an own goal.
Things got even worse minutes later for Seattle when defender Jhon Kennedy Hurtado left the game with a knee injury. Hurtado, who tore the ACL in his left knee last season, injured his right knee, and while the severity of the injury is not yet known, Sounders FC coach Sigi Schmid was hopeful it wasn’t as serious.
“We’ll have to see,” Schmid said. “We think it’s just an MCL or something like that, but anything we say right now is just a guess.”
Only moments after Hurtado left the game, Montero tied the game, firing a free kick from 25 yards out over the wall and into the lower left corner of the net.
In the 69th minute, Seattle fell behind on another tough-luck goal, this one a shot from Jorge Perlaza that deflected off of Wahl and in. But again, Montero was able to get Seattle back into the game, this time finishing from close range off of a well-placed pass from Mauro Rosales.
“It shows a lot of good character from our team to be able to come back twice,” Schmid said. “Fredy this year has been putting in extra work on the free kicks … When you do extra work, you get rewarded. I was very pleased with how he played and his work rate today.”
Coming back twice to earn a tie on the road might have been a solid result, but the Sounders weren’t done. Lamar Neagle, who came into the game as a second-half substitute and had a secondary assist on Montero’s second goal, earned a penalty kick when he was hauled down in the box by Eric Brunner, who was shown a red card for denying a clear goal-scoring opportunity.
Osvaldo Alonso, who hit the pass that freed Neagle, buried the penalty kick past a diving Troy Perkins to give Seattle the lead for good. Montero initially stepped up to take the PK, but Schmid told Alonso to take the shot. The team had spent time in practice this week practicing penalties after Montero missed one in last weekend’s game, and Schmid said Alvaro Fernandez, who had subbed out earlier, and Alonso were his two choices to take a penalty Sunday.
“When we got the penalty I think Ozzie wanted to defer to Fredy to give him a chance at the hat trick, but I said no,” Schmid said.
Seattle then survived a few tense moments and hung on for its fourth win in five games. Sounders FC (9-4-8) is also unbeaten in eight straight. Portland, meanwhile fell to 5-9-3, and has lost six of its past seven.
“You come back twice and then you take the lead — that shows you what’s going on with this team right now,” said goalkeeper Kasey Keller. “The team’s putting in the effort and we’re getting the rewards for it. Especially when you go down with an unlucky goal as we had on two occasions. I think at different times in the last two years the team might have folded. And that’s not the case right now. The case is the team knows that we’re capable of coming back in any kind of situation and get results out of it.”
Notes
Sounders FC players wore black armbands to honor former NASL Sounder Mark Peterson, who passed away Friday at the age of 51. . . Keller was named to the MLS All-Star First XI as the goalkeeper who received the most fan votes. Keller, the only Sounders FC player to make the First XI, is not expected to play in the game, however, because of a conflict with Seattle’s CONCACAF Champions League opening round games.
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