SEATTLE — The Seattle Sounders lost their shot at one trophy Friday night, and hurt their chances for earning an even bigger one as well.
Hosting Vancouver with a lot riding on the outcome for both teams, Seattle fell 1-0 to the Whitecaps in front of 55,765 at CenturyLink Field, the second largest crowd of the season. The result, which came on a somewhat controversial goal, means the Whitecaps retain the Cascadia Cup, the trophy given to the team with the top record in games between Seattle, Vancouver and Portland. A draw or a victory would have given Seattle its first Cascadia Cup since 2011.
More importantly for Seattle, the loss was a setback in their quest for a first Supporters’ Shield, the trophy given to the team with the best regular-season record in Major League Soccer — and yes, that’s a big deal in soccer, unlike other American sports. The Sounders came into the game in a tie for first place with the Los Angeles Galaxy, which plays at Dallas on Sunday. Regardless of what L.A. does, however, both teams will control their own destiny in the race to for the Supporters’ Shield, as well as the top seed in the Western Conference. They end the season playing each other twice, first playing in L.A. next weekend, then ending the regular season in Seattle on Oct. 25.
“We have a lot to play for,” said Sounders coach Sigi Schmid. “Our goal of Supporters’ Shield hasn’t changed and our goal of winning MLS Cup hasn’t changed. We might need a little bit of help from Dallas maybe, but we need to take care of business in our last two games.”
For Vancouver, the win was a huge one not just because of the Cascadia Cup, but also because of the playoff ramifications. The Whitecaps came into the game trailing Portland for the fifth and final playoff spot in the West, and the victory puts them one point ahead of the Timbers heading into the final two games of the season.
The game featured exactly the type of physical, disjointed play you’d expect from two rivals who both had a lot on the line, and while the Sounders possessed the ball well, they did not show their usually dangerous creative ability in the final third, with Vancouver limiting the chances of Seattle’s dynamic duo of Clint Dempsey and Obafemi Martins.
“We had some attempts, but I didn’t think we had a ton of clean looks,” Schmid said. “They did a good job of packing it in the back in the middle and really clogged up the middle of the field for us.”
Vancouver, meanwhile, was threatening on the counter attack, and finally got the game’s first — and only — breakthrough just before the halftime whistle. Kekuta Manneh found himself in tons of open space down the left flank, and the speedy forward took a pass from Pedro Morales, dribbled into the Sounders box, beat Chad Marshall with a touch, then fired a low shot past Sounders goalkeeper Stefan Frei.
Manneh’s goal was a good one, but how he found himself so open bothered the Sounders a bit. A few minutes earlier, Manneh had come off the field a collision with Martins, and he was waived back onto the field by referee Jair Marrufo right as the Whitecaps were in transition on a counter attack. With Manneh stepping onto the field at midfield when he did, Vancouver caught the Sounders down a man in the back end after right back Brad Evans had pushed up in the attack.
“I don’t know if it was necessarily a game that we deserved to win, but I know it’s a game we didn’t deserve to lose,” Schmid said. “A little breakdown where Manneh was off injured, then comes back onto the field and catches us by surprise … Evans had gone forward with the ball, then the referee lets the guy onto the field. Usually the referee doesn’t let him on the field when the ball’s on the same side of the field.”
Seattle pushed hard for the tying goal throughout the second half, but few quality chances materialized. The Sounders nearly got their equalizer in stoppage time when Brad Evans won a header off of a free kick, but Whitecaps defender Kendall Watson headed the shot off the line.
In the end, the Sounders can still achieve their biggest goals, but Friday’s result made it that much more difficult. If Los Angeles wins or ties in Dallas Sunday, the Sounders will need at least a win and a tie in the final two games to finish on top. If L.A. loses, however, keeping the tie for first, a split or two draws in the final two games would be enough for Seattle, which holds the tiebreaker having won more games than the Galaxy.
“Right now we’ve all got to stay together,” Evans said. “… We’ll see what the other results are, but regardless we should be looking to win the next two anyways and not looking for any favors or any help from other teams, because that’s not going to happen. Nobody said it’s going easy. Obviously everybody’s disappointed, and we all think we could have done a little bit more in these situations, played a little bit different, but at the end of the day, we lose 1-0 to a rival, and now we’ve got to have that fire to come back and play another rival back to back, and get the results if we’re really truly that team.”
Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com
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