The overcast mood in the immediate aftermath of Sounders FC’s 2-0 loss to San Jose over the weekend didn’t have much time to sit in residence over the team’s collective head. Everything at this time of year seems to pile on top of everything else, a mass logjam of fixtures and injuries and rotation players and hotel rooms.
This is one of those weeks that showed up on Seattle’s doorstep like an outspoken, if not entirely unwelcome house guest. All year Seattle hadn’t lost a game by more than a single goal, and in their first 16 they’d only lost four total. Last week, in the course of four days, Sounders FC dropped a heated 3-1 match to the Portland Timbers in Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup play and a 2-0 loss to a struggling San Jose Earthquakes side in MLS action.
Both of those matches were at home, and the former snapped a 10-year unbeaten run at Starfire Stadium in U.S. Open Cup play. Suffice it to say, it was a bizarre week the team is glad to have behind it.
But what awaits Sounders FC this week is no patch of gillyflowers either. Back-to-back road matches on opposite sides of the country against the Philadelphia Union and those same Portland Timbers within a four-day span will test this team’s mettle. More importantly, these matches will gauge whether last week was an off-beat anomaly or the start of a mid-summer swoon.
As far as the team is concerned, the prospect of more games, regardless of where they are, is the most apt prescription possible after a rickety week.
“Just want to get back on the pitch as soon as possible, to be honest,” said midfielder Andy Rose, who played in a higher role in Clint Dempsey’s absence last weekend. “Any time you have a loss like that where we actually felt like we put together some good stuff, maybe deserved a little bit more out of the game, we just want to get back out on the pitch as soon as possible and pick up some points.”
On any other week it might be difficult to look past the dragging Union, who were shellacked 5-1 by the LA Galaxy last weekend. After all, the Timbers and Providence Park await on Sunday, which is unquestionably the Timbers’ biggest home match of the season. Knowing Portland will pour its entire supply of resolve into winning that match, how easy can it be to focus on the lowly Union?
As it turns out, pretty easy. This team needs points. Veteran defender Zach Scott mentioned last week that Seattle needs to stay vigilant to keep its place atop the Western Conference, a position that was narrowed to a mere tiebreaker with a game in hand after the Vancouver Whitecaps drew level on 29 points last weekend. So while the Union may be the worst team in the league in several key categories, they’ll have Seattle’s full attention on Wednesday.
“You’ve got to look at one game at a time right now,” Sounders FC coach Sigi Schmid said. “We’ve got to put the best team on the field that we can for this team on Wednesday, and get the result we’re looking for, which is a win obviously. And when we get through Wednesday, then we’ll think about Portland.”
Sounders FC is still battling the residual injury bug that ruled out key pieces like Osvaldo Alonso, Gonzalo Pineda and Obafemi Martins against San Jose. And Dempsey will miss both games on this road trip to finish off a suspension he picked up last week. But the team was encouraged by the Cristian Roldan-Michael Azira combo deep in central midfield, and Marco Pappa looked dangerous as ever. The team merely needs to find a way to plug in more of a creative spark to generate goals without Martins or Dempsey.
The biggest challenge this week could be the contrasting styles between the two opponents. As a team, the Union are a bizarre blend of many differing styles and no style in particular. The Union are simultaneously second-to-last in the league in possession percentage per game (46.2 percent) and dead last in long balls per game. What that should tell you is that even with the added guile of Fernando Aristeguieta, the Union haven’t settled on any particular style, and it’s mostly killing them. They neither play over you nor go through you with anything approaching consistency.
While that’s been bad news for the Union’s league positioning, it also makes them dangerous. Seattle could get the Union team that was blasted by the Galaxy, or it could get the version that trounced an upper echelon Columbus Crew SC team 3-0 on June 3. Look at Philly’s heat map from the latter match and notice that gaping void in Zone 14, or the imaginary square just outside the central portion of the box.
Zone 14 is the most dangerous area of the field for chance creation. Geographically, it provides you with the most head-on approach to goal, and it’s generally teeming with attacking life as strikers and attacking midfielders and overlapping box-to-box players and pinch-in wingers collide. The Union ignored it almost entirely and still scored three goals (and pitched a shutout too, no less) against one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference.
There are times when MLS defies analysis. The Union belong in that category.
So while normally it may be hard for Sounders FC to pare down its focus from an anticipated Timbers matchup to simply this game against a near-basement Union team, they don’t need any convincing. They need points. And they’re hunting them intently on the East Coast this week.
“You don’t want to look too far ahead, obviously,” Rose said. “[It’s] rivalry week. The guys will be raring to go for Sunday, but the most important thing is focusing on [the Union], first and foremost.”
