The mood at halftime was a somber mix of introspection and firebrand motivation.
The Portland Timbers held a seemingly insurmountable 4-0 lead at the interval in Seattle’s last match on Aug. 28. As the Sounders listened to interim coach Brian Schmetzer rally the troops in an attempt to close the gap, the mental view of the mountain the team needed to climb must’ve spired endlessly into the sky.
“Obviously, everybody was disappointed,” Sounders captain Brad Evans said of the mood at half. “Schmetzer came in and said, ‘We’re going to do one thing. We’re going to play for the badge. If you don’t do that, I’ll take you off.’”
Schmetzer made a few tailored alterations during the course of the match, none more deeply felt than the introduction of bruising center back Roman Torres at halftime. The Sounders had been ripped to shreds defensively, pulled out of position in a multitude of ways and left to rebuild the broken pieces after 45 minutes. Fans had been awaiting Torres’ reintroduction since he tore his ACL last September, and for the second match in a row he sat on the bench, waiting.
Schmetzer’s biggest dice roll was on Torres, who slid into the back next to Chad Marshall. The Sounders had been cautious with Torres’ road to recovery, careful to sit him long enough that his tendon and the muscles around it were fully game ready. Still, it’s impossible to know until he played actual game minutes. Would he be ready when his bell rang?
Schmetzer didn’t need to wait long for an answer. Torres was ready.
Torres’ impact on the score sheet was obvious. The Sounders didn’t give up a goal in the second half and put together a worthy 45 minutes in which they scored a pair of goals to make the final score a less stinging 4-2. But a careful examination of Torres’ half in particular had to leave Schmetzer and crew with some measure of satisfaction amidst the difficult day. If throwing Torres into a blender on the road in a blowout in which the defense had been reeling was a gamble, then it was a gamble that paid out.
The Sounders’ defense hasn’t been bad this year, which is an important way to start the discussion about how Torres works in this setup. But it’s been inconsistent and lacks a stuck-in enforcer. The Sounders are dead last in MLS in tackles per game and are 18th in interceptions. They also foul less on average than all but one team in the league, which isn’t a bad thing necessarily but does hint at a deeper truth regarding the defense. Through August, it simply didn’t get stuck in.
In truth, that isn’t the preference of any of the typical first-choice back four: Marshall, Evans, Joevin Jones and Tyrone Mears. At least in the middle, Marshall is a stand-up center back who does most of his best work aerially, while Evans’ predilection as a natural midfielder is to step up into the shallow defensive midfield and pick out passes. Both will go to ground hard, but neither is all that natural doing it.
This is the obvious entry point into why the Sounders need Torres so badly. Against the Timbers, he provided a rough-and-tumble Bad Cop to Marshall’s Good Cop, cajoling Timbers players and cleaning out challenges with a rugged and brash surety. Torres is a tremendous recovery back, and to say he’s unafraid of instigating is to say a tank is an off-road vehicle.
One of Torres’ most notable impact points had nothing to do with his play and everything to do with his personality.
At one point early in the second half, not long after Torres’ introduction, Timbers striker Fanendo Adi strode into the Sounders’ box for a corner kick. There to greet him was Torres, who immediately jostled Adi and firmly if calmly began pushing him out of the six-yard box as a rhino might push a boulder out of its way. A clearly perturbed Adi spent more time in this sequence complaining to the ref for a foul that was never coming than he did attempting to judge the flight path of the ball. The corner ultimately came to nothing.
If you’re so inclined, go back and watch Adi for the entirety of the second half. He was stymied and frustrated at every corner by Torres, who basically marked him out of the game after he was such a terror in the first half. The Sounders killer suddenly looked like a lamb.
This, in addition to his ability to track attacks, is arguably Torres’ biggest utility to a Sounders defense that lacked snarl in its current setup. He has that rare ability to infiltrate a striker’s psyche and ruin his day off the ball. And it’s why Torres is so key for this team at this particular juncture.
The Sounders are still seeking their first shutout under Schmetzer and their first overall in nearly two months. If Torres is the catalyst for a shift in that narrative, don’t say you didn’t see it coming.
