SEATTLE — Jordan Morris did it again. And so did the Seattle Sounders.
At one time the Sounders’ season did not seem so well understood. Six weeks into the year, Seattle was hovering around the bottom of the Western Conference and, more importantly, desperately searching for an attacking identity. Even if the results were occasionally there, questions abounded after a numbers of matches.
This will not be one of those occasions. Morris scored for the fourth time in four games. Seattle won for the fourth time in six. Things are quickly looking up as the MLS season drives deeper into the month of May.
After some early stumbles, Seattle is suddenly on the up-and-up and careening toward the top half of the West. Saturday’s richly deserved 2-0 win over the San Jose Earthquakes sent Seattle to its fourth win in its last six games and reasserted some much-needed control over an Earthquakes team that had a solid run of form against Seattle of late. Perhaps more to the point, Seattle looked the part on Saturday and dominated just about every facet of the match.
Here’s a look at three things we learned on Saturday.
Erik Friberg played the Paul Pogba role brilliantly
There’s no question that when the Sounders brought Erik Friberg back for his second stint in the Rave Green last year, the front office knew he’d have an outsized role to play. After all, there are few box-to-box central midfielders in MLS over the last half-decade who’ve looked quite so assured as the Swede.
But even coach Sigi Schmid might not have expected such a balanced performance as the one he got from Friberg on Saturday.
Paul Pogba has become known as perhaps the most all-action central midfielder in Europe over the last couple years for Italian club Juventus. He does a bit of everything, from tracking runners to linking play to connecting the final killer pass. Friberg has never quite been that player. As is evidenced by his numbers, he’s been far more of a sitting central midfielder than a marauding centerpiece who does something in every third.
That was not the case on Saturday.
In his 71 minutes as the intra-line link between Osvaldo Alonso and the attack, Friberg completed nearly 75 percent of his 53 passes in the attacking third. He set up Seattle’s first goal, a Clint Dempsey one-touch beauty that started with a Friberg cross. He set up two more prime near-miss chances, including one to Morris in the 52nd minute that produced a one-on-one chance that David Bingham cleared off beautifully.
It almost looked as though Friberg had jammed some Andrea Pirlo highlights on fast forward and gone about his day. He was that good. It was an MVP performance, on the whole.
Friberg has always been more positionally liquid than Alonso, but if he keeps doing this the Sounders don’t have to worry about how they’ll link up the midfield and attack lines going forward. Friberg is the answer.
Dempsey might have found his long-term role
The 4-3-3 has been a continually evolving project this season. It’s a new formation, and that naturally means players have to find new niches. No surprises there. But maybe the biggest nagging question was how Dempsey fit into the setup as a whole. If he isn’t the No. 9, isn’t the left winger and isn’t a midfielder, what’s his role?
Schmid might’ve found it on Saturday.
Dempsey was nominally positioned as a midfielder on Saturday in the team sheet, but at least until the subs shifted in and jumbled the front three with Andreas Ivanschitz and Nelson Valdez, the Sounders played a functional 4-4-2 on Saturday. It might not have said so on the team sheet, but Seattle did this with two strikers, two wide “midfielders,” a sitting destroyer and a box-to-box midfielder.
The first thing - and most important thing - to note here is Dempsey’s positioning. In this setup he’s the second striker, which is far and away his best deployment at this stage in his career. In this setup he’s deep enough to affect change in the midfield and close enough to the box to run and defenders and create havoc close to goal. And that’s exactly what he did on Saturday. No surprise he scored Seattle’s first goal. He was already in prime position for it.
Schmid’s teams tend to play their best soccer when they can array themselves in some kind of loose 4-4-2. That’s not to say that formations are solid states, but Saturday produced the best soccer Seattle’s played all year, and it was largely down to allowing Morris to be the primary forward and Dempsey to play off his back shoulder.
We’ll see what happens when Ivanschitz and Valdez return to the starting XI, but at least on this day the formation was a masterstroke.
Sometimes luck follows you home
Soccer is ultimately a game of chance blended with the skill engendered over a lifetime. The latter can make the introduction of the former an eternal frustration, but it’s also the thing that makes the game beautiful. Some of that admixture made Saturday’s match the heaviest of dramas.
Seattle led 1-0 with five minutes left in the match when Tyrone Mears cut down Victor Bernardez in the box. It was a clear penalty, and referee Alan Kelly didn’t miss it. Unsurprisingly, San Jose goalmaster Chris Wondolowski stepped up to the spot to take the kick that would level the match and possibly cut Seattle’s goal share from three to one. Given the fact that Wondolowski is the fourth-highest goal scorer in MLS history, odds were not in Sounders keeper Stefan Frei’s favor.
Odds, however, are odds for a reason. Wondolowski, who’s been significantly better on his penalties this year, smashed his kick off the left upright, and Morris scored the clincher minutes later. On such fine margins do matches rest.
Everything about the moment seemed to favor San Jose. The penalty shout was deserved. The penalty-taker was one of the most prolific scorers in the history of the league. Frei dove in the wrong direction. He seemingly kept his shot in control. And it still bounced out. When the odds are in your favor, you don’t ask questions.
There have been so many occasions over the last few years when luck has not sided with Seattle in situations where you might expect some cosmic grace. So it was nice to see three points fall to Seattle in a situation where the Sounders, on statistical balance, thoroughly deserved them.
