SEATTLE — In every season there are unique hurdles to leap, obstacles to dodge, turbulence to negotiate. Sounders FC has perhaps had more than most this season. The injuries, the absences, the dipping mid-season form all threatened to scuttle Seattle’s season before it lifted off the ground.
Hurdles don’t get much higher than this, and leaps don’t get much more monumental. Finally, after so much playoff heartbreak, Seattle ended the LA Galaxy’s season in the overheated forge of the postseason.
The win moves Seattle into a two-legged Western Conference Semifinals matchup with either FC Dallas or Vancouver Whitecaps FC, depending on the result of the Portland Timbers-Sporting Kansas City match on Thursday. The Sounders have come a long way from a summer nadir, when they briefly dropped out of the playoff picture. Now, they’ll host at least one more playoff game on Sunday, and maybe more.
The Sounders said all week that there was something fitting in their playoff road running through the defending champion Galaxy, who knocked them out of the postseason in 2010, 2012 and 2014. And while, yes, this was just one paved brick on a road the team hopes will ultimately stretch on for another month, it wanted to beat this particular Galaxy team maybe more than it even let on.
Consider that mission dutifully accomplished.
“It definitely feels good,” said Sounders FC Head Coach Sigi Schmid. “We talked before the game about, ‘Hey, we started something last Sunday (in a 3-1 win over Real Salt Lake), we want to continue it today, we want to carry it into next Sunday.’ I think these guys have a lot of heart and desire. Sometimes that carries you a long way.”
The game itself was so end-to-end, scintillating and outright bizarre that there were four goals in the opening 22 minutes to set the score at a madcap 2-2. Clint Dempsey scored the opener in the fifth minute, only for Sebastian Lletget to equalize a minute later. Nelson Valdez poked home the draw-breaker in the 12th of a pinpoint Andreas Ivanschitz cross, and Gyasi Zardes erased yet another lead 10 minutes later.
The winner, finally, blessedly, came in the 73rd off a beautifully taken Erik Friberg left-footed blast. It was his first goal since re-joining the team in June and, in a candid moment after the game in a stadium elevator, one he confessed he might never make again.
But perhaps the maddest moments came in the dark ether between goals, when injuries and substitutions made their familiar but unwelcome entry into the rainy evening’s proceedings.
On the whole, there is a marked difference in strategy and tactics. The former entirely encompasses pregame preparation, while the latter involves a coach’s in-game maneuvering. On Wednesday, Schmid’s tactical acumen shot directly to the fore. The Sounders won in large part because he flat out-coached five-time MLS Cup winner Bruce Arena, who sorely offered that the Galaxy “gift-wrapped” the game on five separate occasions.
Schmid’s pregame strategy was shredded to ribbons as early as the 36th minute. Starting left back Leo Gonzalez was forced out of the game with an injury, and both center back Zach Scott and reserve left back Oniel Fisher stripped off their warmups. As they did, captain Brad Evans trotted to the sideline and told Schmid in no uncertain terms to bring on Scott at center back and move him to the left instead.
That made up Schmid’s mind, despite the fact that Evans had never once played left back this season. Scott entered and busted up a handful of attacks, including a key marking job in stoppage time on late sub Alan Gordon off an in-swinging free kick. Evans, meanwhile, pushed so hard at left back he pulled up with a hamstring injury in the nervy, loud moments of stoppage time. The Sounders finished on 10 men. They shut out the Galaxy during Evans’ 55 minutes on the left and ultimately won the game.
Captain indeed.
“Zach has done wonders against LA in the past, and so it was a question throughout the week of where do I fit in, and should we put Zach at center back,” Evans said. “At the end of the day, I went over (to Schmid) and said to throw Zach in and put me at left back and I’ll play as a left back. Do what you can for the team.”
That became a recurring theme on Wednesday. Most of the team knew Nelson Valdez wasn’t 90 minutes fit before the match, and his work on the left wing is especially taxing on legs that aren’t 100 percent. Valdez’s work rate was beginning to wane by halftime, and Dempsey suggested to Schmid at the break that he’d swap places to keep Valdez on the field a few extra minutes. About two minutes into the second half, Dempsey swept in from wide, raking across center backs Leonardo and Omar Gonzalez to put a header on keeper Donovan Ricketts’ left side to force a sprawling save.
Valdez went until the 75th minute. Dempsey played a key role in the rest of the match. Chalk up another successful tactical chess move to Schmid.
“A lot of the guys gave of themselves tonight,” Schmid said, “and I think that showed the character of the team.”
Perhaps the team’s most impressive reversal was defensively. The Sounders played without Osvaldo Alonso due to injury, and the gaps between the back line and central midfielders Friberg and Andy Rose were evident early, when LA scored two goals in the opening 22 minutes. But the introduction of Scott cinched up some of the holes. Rose’s energetic buoyancy all but cut Steven Gerrard out of the game, and Giovani dos Santos’ bizarrely deep positioning caused in part by Friberg’s electric marking, which took a vast amount of pressure off the defense. Dos Santos connected with dangerman Robbie Keane once all night.
And don’t forget Stefan Frei, who’s probably been the team’s most consistently good player this season. The game was open enough that the Swiss acrobat was forced to make a handful of big saves, none bigger than a stabbing left-handed jab to rob Zardes of a sure goal in the 82nd minute.
Further, the defense in front of him kept Keane from doing much of note for pretty much the entire match.
“Soccer has turned into a game of transition,” Frei said. “Whether it’s from offense to defense or defense to offense, it’s huge. I think one of our goals is when we’re on offense and turn the ball over, to make sure we made sure we know where (Keane) was right away. We closed that space so they weren’t able to find him.”
In the end, Friberg’s roping 73rd-minute winner to catch Ricketts outside his castle walls seemed fitting. The Sounders have been one of the best teams in MLS over the final two months of the season, and they were riding a seven-game unbeaten streak into the postseason.
Now? Make it eight. The Western Conference Semifinals await.
“I think having gone through some of the struggles we went through, it makes you stronger,” Schmid said. “You learn more from failure than you learn from success sometimes. We struggled a little bit, and I think the guys know that this is a window of opportunity. We’ve got to take advantage of it.”
