Sounders seek two home wins

SEATTLE — Is the first week of June too soon for hyperbole?

Apparently not for Seattle Sounders FC, which has two home games before a league-wide World Cup break, starting tonight against the New England Revolution.

“I think these next two games are the biggest games I’ve had since I’ve been a Sounder,” midfielder/forward Steve Zakuani said. “We have to win the next two games, get back to .500, then come back after the break and start the season again.”

Sure the season is not yet half way over, but after a 3-5-3 start to the season, one that has seen Sounders FC play worse at home than on the road, two home games in the next six days against struggling opponents is the perfect chance for Seattle to turn things around.

“We don’t want to lose the connection to the rest of the teams in the West,” Sounders FC coach Sigi Schmid said. “Obviously we are behind now, especially when it relates to second place — I’m not worried about first place right now. So we want to maintain a connection with second place. We want to be in striking distance. This league is an up and down league. Teams go through good streaks and bad streaks. If we can start hitting a good streak now, that’s much better than waiting a couple of weeks.”

Seattle hasn’t won a game at home since April 17, and hasn’t scored a home goal in 266 minutes. Schmid has speculated that one of the problems may be that Seattle’s sellout crowds may motivate opposing teams that don’t otherwise see crowds of 35,000. In a friendly against Boca Juniors last week, Seattle played well at home, securing a 3-0 win, but it remains to be seen if that can translate to a game that counts in the standings.

“We want to win at home,” Schmid said. “We want to reestablish ourselves at home. That’s really important. That’s going to be a big theme here for us is to establish our home field dominance and to win our games at home, to use our crowd to our advantage and not let it become an advantage for the opponent.”

Seattle’s struggles have gotten so bad that Schmid and his players are talking like a cursed team. Calls have gone against them, they say. Bounces aren’t going their way, they lament. Schmid even said earlier this week that he didn’t think his team had been treated fairly by officials this season.

“We haven’t gotten any breaks so far,” Zakuani said. “You do create your own luck, but at the same time, you see some of the goals around the league and think, ‘When is that going to happen for us.”

And to be fair, Sounders FC has suffered a few bad breaks, including missed offside calls that have been bad enough to be used as examples in weekly referee reviews. Ultimately, however, Seattle knows that good play trumps bad luck, and the team hopes that begins tonight against New England.

“It always seems like when things are going against you, everything’s going against you, from wrong offside either for us or against us, handballs, fouls that aren’t called,” goalkeeper Kasey Keller said. “It just seems to be an array of things going wrong, but the best thing we can do is to go win a game where we’re not down to one goal or one call or something like that. Go score three or four goals, and if we don’t get an offside call, it doesn’t matter, because you’re already winning by three.”

Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com.