After winning three straight games – including a pair of two-goal victories on the road – Sounders FC came up short against Columbus Crew SC on Saturday in a 3-2 defeat at MAPFRE Stadium.
Seattle was able to control possession for much of the match, and Clint Dempsey put in another strong performance with two goals. However, Crew SC had the majority of the scoring chances, taking 24 shots to Seattle’s 11. Sounders FC goalkeeper Stefan Frei was forced into making a career-high 10 saves, as many of Crew SC’s attempts were clean looks that landed on frame.
Columbus has scored 15 goals this season, the most among Eastern Conference teams.
The Sounders will now turn their attention to Vancouver Whitecaps FC, another team that boasts a formidable attacking unit. Here’s what Head Coach Sigi Schmid and his players said about moving on from Saturday’s defeat and preparing for next weekend’s match.
Sigi Schmid:
“You can’t get too high, and you can’t get too low. We’re all right. We’re a good road team – We’re 2-2-1 on the road, and I don’t think there’s many teams that have that kind of record on the road. …We’ve just got to get our legs back, get some good training in. At least we’re staying on the West Coast for the next trip, so that helps. We don’t have to get on an airplane.”
Chad Marshall:
“We had a good run up until today, so we’ll just look at the tape and learn from it. There’s not anything we need to drastically change. We’ll just tweak some stuff and move on. …[Vancouver] is going to be another tough game. They’ve got fast guys that get at you quickly, so we need to watch video from this game, learn from it and make some changes for next week.”
Gonzalo Pineda:
"[Vancouver]'s a similar style to Columbus, so we need to improve on our two lines of four. We need to improve that this week. I believe we can be better, but today we didn’t have the best day.”
