SEATTLE – The Seattle Sounders needed a bounceback effort going into their Thursday evening matchup with the San Jose Earthquakes at CenturyLink Field.
To stay they achieved their objective would be a drastic understatement.
The Sounders didn’t just beat the Quakes on Thursday. They did so in historic fashion, exploding for a club-record seven goals in what eventually ended in a 7-1 rout. It was a dominant showing from start to finish, beginning with Jordan Morris’ fourth-minute charge down the middle and ending with Joevin Jones’ second of the game just before the hour mark.
“In reality, no, I haven’t been in a match with that type of score, that distance,” admitted midfielder João Paulo, who scored his first MLS goal as part of the onslaught in the 48th minute.
The Sounders also became the quickest team in MLS history to reach five goals in the match, needing just 33 minutes to hit that mark.
The entire opening half-hour was a clinic, in link-up play at every level of the field, and in creating easy chances. Raúl Ruidíaz wound up with two more goals courtesy of his first-half brace, which were set up by Morris and Nicolás Lodeiro.
Speaking of Morris, the Homegrown star ran absolutely wild, adding a trio of assists to his early opener. He’s now stuffed the stat sheet to the tune of six goals and five assists through 10 matches. And spare a thought for Jones, who scored his first two goals of the season and assisted on two more.
“The first 30 minutes were great,” Schmetzer said. “I loved everything about it. It’s certainly a positive stepping stone. San Jose is certainly a trick opponent, that’s not an easy team to play against. So, again, that makes the seven goals even better.”
Asked what led to the emphatic breakout, Schmetzer said part of it was the players being locked in from the beginning, eager to put a disappointing 2-1 rivalry defeat to the Portland Timbers on Sunday behind them.
In the end, they just did that, and made some history in the process.
“I just think the team was ready to play tonight,” Schmetzer said. “I could tell before the game, they were ready for this game. They wanted another game. They wanted to play again to erase the sting of losing to Portland.
“We just wanted to play well. When you take a bad result, coaches want to see a response. And we saw a response. It was that group in there that did most of it. I didn’t specifically say, ‘We need to better here, we need to do this, we need to do this’. I wanted the team to play well. If our team plays well, if our team plays up to our potential, we have a chance to win any game we play.”
