Believe it or not, for the first time since the playoff chase became relevant this season, the Seattle Sounders have their postseason fate in their own hands.
Perhaps the strangest season in the Sounders’ MLS history could yet wind up with postseason soccer.
Seattle’s been through the ringer this year. Between the exit of longtime coach Sigi Schmid, the scary health troubles of Clint Dempsey, the summer swoon that saw the Sounders briefly dip into the Western Conference cellar to their stirring return to form, 2016 incinerated any semblance of a broader plan long ago.
Now it’s simply about the chase for the postseason. And for the first time in a long time, the Sounders have an inside track. As Seattle visits southern California on Sunday for a pivotal battle against the second-place LA Galaxy (1 p.m. PT; ESPN, 107.7 The End, El Rey 1360AM), the playoffs are gleaming through a slight crack in the door. Walking through it will be the challenging part.
The Sounders’ stirring 1-0 win over outgunned Vancouver last weekend vaulted them into seventh in the West. That’s five points behind sliding Sporting Kansas City for the final postseason spot with a crucial two games in hand. That means on even games played, the Sounders can win their next two and effectively occupy sixth place, regardless of what happens with SKC. All they’ll need to throw the thing into overdrive is a positive result against the streaking Galaxy. On the road.
No big deal. The Galaxy haven’t gone unbeaten in 16 of their last 17 or anything, including all 15 games this season.
In order to do this, the Sounders certainly need all hands on deck defensively. Nobody in the league has a more impressive track record of rolling up blowout wins than the Galaxy, who sport the league’s best goal differential by five. But that’s perhaps of less concern for the Sounders because they’ve displayed the ability to quiet the Galaxy in earlier matches. They simply weren’t able to provide the goals on the other end.
And this, in a nutshell, is where the game will be won. If the Sounders are able to keep the Galaxy to at most a single goal - as they’ve done twice already this year - their ability to finish will dictate the result, for better or worse.
The biggest problem on that end for the Sounders, perhaps, is that they’re still without effective attacking weapon Dempsey. The Texan may have taken a back seat in hype to Nicolas Lodeiro after the latter arrived with so much pomp in July, but Dempsey hadn’t played as well as he had with Lodeiro since his days next to Obafemi Martins last season. He was reinvigorated, and five of his eight goals were scored with Lodeiro pulling the strings.
The club is “cautiously optimistic” Dempsey will return in 2016 from an irregular heartbeat from which he was cleared to practice last week. But when that will be is anyone’s guess.
Without Dempsey, the Sounders have five goals in their last four games, which isn’t a bad rate of return but isn’t quite up to their rate of eight in three over the previous three matches in which Dempsey and Lodeiro started. All three were wins, while Seattle is 1-1-2 in its last four in a critical time of year.
What’s more, the Sounders have led for all of nine minutes in their last 360 minutes of action: two Lodeiro-fed comeback draws, a 4-2 loss to the Timbers and a win against the Whitecaps.
In truth, the Sounders need width, but that remedy isn’t on the roster. For all his skill on dead balls and coming centrally to combine, Andreas Ivanschitz isn’t a natural sideline-hugging vertical player on the left. And the right midfield position has been moved around consistently this year, most recently from Cristian Roldan and Alvaro Fernandez.
Whoever starts there, this lineup will be narrow in the attacking third, but that certainly hasn’t stopped Lodeiro from creating, scoring and generally doing whatever he wants. Expect the same against an up-and-down Galaxy back line that hasn’t exactly been buttoned up this year. With Jordan Morris in top form, the Sounders shouldn’t hurt for chances against a team missing Steven Gerrard and Gyasi Zardes from the midfield through injury.
The Sounders will be scoreboard watching on Saturday. The game of most interest will be Sporting KC-San Jose, from which the Sounders will probably want a draw. An SKC win could open space between the Sounders and sixth place, while an Earthquakes win would put more pressure on the Sounders to beat the Galaxy. Likewise, a Houston upset over fifth-place Portland wouldn’t hurt either. At the very least, Seattle will have a much better idea of where it stands when it hits the field on Sunday afternoon.
The Sounders can perhaps afford a loss to the Galaxy, and depending on results elsewhere it may not sting that badly. But at this time of year with margins this fine, you don’t want to leave it to chance. A draw wouldn’t be the end of the world, but the Sounders could certainly do with a win.
