You can’t blame David Ousted for thinking Clint Dempsey would be shooting.
After all, Dempsey had buried a highlight-reel free kick against Club America in Scotiabank CONCACAF Champions League play less than a month earlier. But even if the Vancouver Whitecaps goalkeeper had known Andreas Ivanschitz would ultimately get the nod, there’s little chance Ousted would have been able to do anything about it anyway.
Ivanschitz stepped up to a free kick from 20 yards out on the left side of the 18-yard-box early in the second half of the Seattle Sounders’ home match with the Whitecaps on March 19. The Austrian whipped in a devastating strike with equal amounts pace and bend to get it past the Vancouver wall and a helpless Ousted. The goal opened Ivanschitz’s 2016 scoring account and leveled the match.
The Sounders would eventually fall 2-1 after two penalty kicks from the Whitecaps’ Pedro Morales, but Ivanschitz’s tally set him up for an effective year on the left flank, from which he scored three times and assisted on eight more.
He is currently nursing a right knee sprain and has missed the last four matches, but he is working toward getting back to match fitness.
