SEATTLE — All season, depth has been the strength of the Seattle Sounders. With Major League Soccer as well as the U.S. Open Cup and the CONCACAF Champions League, it was vital that Seattle be able to call on anyone at any time.
And for the most part, it’s worked great. Seattle won the U.S.
Open Cup, advanced to the knockout stage of the Champions League and looks like a leading contender for the MLS Cup. But sometimes depth can be stretched only so far.
Missing their top three offensive players, the Sounders struggled to finish their chances and lost to the Philadelphia Union 2-0 in front of 36,304 fans at CenturyLink Field Saturday night. It was the first time Seattle has been shut out in a MLS match since Aug. 13.
The loss eliminates Seattle from contention for the Supporters Shield, given to the team with the best regular-season MLS record. The Sounders also lost a chance to clinch second place in the West.
“It was one of those bad days where everybody can look at whatever different excuse you want to come up with, but at the same time, we just weren’t good enough today,” keeper Kasey Keller said. “We have to hold our hands up and say, ‘OK, that’s not good enough.’ Let’s get that out of our system and be ready to roll through the rest of the season.”
It was tough enough that Seattle faced a Union squad that now leads the East and had given up a division-low 34 goals. But the Sounders did it without Fredy Montero (yellow card accumulation suspension), Mauro Rosales (knee) and Alvaro Fernandez (concussion). They account for 31 of the team’s 70 goals and 28 of the 66 assists. Without them, the Sounders managed 13 shots to just six for Philly, but only two were on goal, allowing rookie keeper Zac MacMath to earn the shutout.
“We could say, ‘OK, we’re missing those guys,'” Sounders coach Sigi Schmid said. “But we had enough people on the field. We had enough people who could do it. We just had too many people who didn’t have a good game.”
It also appeared Seattle suffered from an emotional letdown from Tuesday’s U.S. Open Cup championship win. The Sounders clearly lacked energy, especially in the scoreless first half when they had just three shots.
“If we would have played with half the intensity we did in the second half, we come out on top,” midfielder Brad Evans said. “But we came out slow.”
The second half opened with more energy and in the 52nd minute Evans chipped a shot over the Philly defense but it hit the crossbar and was cleared. Two minutes later, Keller made an outstanding diving save on a shot by Velijko Paunovic.
A defensive mistake cost Seattle in the 60th minute when James Riley tried to shield Gabriel Farfan from the ball as it rolled toward the end line, but Farfan was able to poke it toward the middle of the box where Freddy Adu left-footed a shot past Keller for his second goal since he joined Philadelphia in mid-August.
Ten minutes later, the Union put the game away when Seattle pushed forward on a corner kick but was caught out of position on the counter, with former Sounder Sebastian Le Toux passing to a wide-open Brian Carroll who easily finished for a 2-0 lead.
Schmid believes the “pain of losing,” could serve as strong motivation for his team going forward.
“It wasn’t our best game,” he said. “We’ve been through a lot as a team. We’ve had some emotional highs the last two weeks and sometimes you come out a little bit flat, and we were a little bit flat today. …We’ll take it on the chin and we’ll learn from it.”
The Sounders have two regular-season matches left as well as a CONCACAF game. Seattle is six points ahead of third-place Real Salt Lake in the West.
“As a professional you have to be ready for stuff like this,” Keller said. “You have to say, ‘OK, Tuesday night was great, now I have to get ready for Saturday.’ You’re going to have a lot of time in November, December, January to go celebrate or commiserate for what you did the last eight months. We can’t just push it under the rug and say, ‘OK, that’s a bad day.’ We have to accept that that’s not good enough and be ready for next weekend, and the weekend after that, and then for the playoffs.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
