Cushioned between general quality play and a few impressive wins, the Sounders’ season has been filled with an uncommon number of near-misses and tough breaks.
It happened again. Breaks don’t get much more difficult than the one fate dealt Seattle on Saturday night.
The Sounders led the New England Revolution 1-0 on the road through a brilliant bit of work from Aaron Kovar in the seventh minute. It was a deserved lead for a Sounders team that owned the first 25 minutes. And then luck turned. Erik Friberg was called for a handball in the box off a clearance that hit him in the stomach. His folded arms happened to be there too.
Lee Nguyen hit the penalty to draw level, and the game changed. For good, really.
The Sounders took some time to level out, but once they did in the second half the match turned into an end-to-end affair. And then it happened again. Zach Scott denied Nguyen an entry pass in the box with about 10 minutes to play, and the deflection ran straight to substitute Femi Hollinger-Janzen a few yards outside the box. Hollinger-Janzen slipped, got up and smashed the shot far post.
“We worked our tails off, and we gave up a goal like that,” Scott said after the match. “It’s just disappointing. There’s no way that should happen. I don’t know what to say. It’s getting old.”
Just like that it was 2-1. The Sounders couldn’t find another. Here are three takeaways from a near-miss of a night.
Tony Alfaro made quite the first impression
We’ll get to the sad stuff in a minute. First, to the good news.
Getting your first start in an MLS match is difficult enough. Doing it on the fly as a first-half sub adds another layer of unexpectedness onto an experience most would consider moderately stressful in even the best of circumstances.
Brad Evans left the match for good with five minutes left in the first half after taking a Kei Kamara shot to the back of the head. Alfaro, the S2 standout who was drafted by the Sounders out of Division II Cal State Dominguez Hills in January, pulled on his senior jersey for the first time and immediately slotted in next to Scott for the rest of the match.
Alfaro hardly put a foot wrong over his near hour-long debut stint. Off the bench, that’s a doubly impressive feat. He had four clearances, a pair of tackles, two interceptions and blocked a team-high two shots. A few times he even dispossessed one of New England’s capable fleet of attackers only to step out into the build and feed an attacker. That was an especially welcome feat since Evans usually fills that role.
Alfaro didn’t exactly come into the match cold. He currently leads all S2 players in minutes played this season with an even 900, and that no doubt helped him ease into his first ever MLS appearance. If they’re all as assured as this one, the Sounders have a capable left-footed center back in the making for the future.
The penalty that wasn’t
After each match, a chosen attending reporter has the opportunity to ask in writing the referee a question about a controversial call. After this one, the choice was obvious: referee Fotis Bazakos’ decision to award New England a penalty in the 24th minute after a ball struck Friberg in the solar plexus.
Here was his answer.
“From my position, I observed Friberg’s arms raised away from his body. Then I observed his arm making contact with the ball.”
Referees of course don’t have the benefit of replay, which makes their job tougher than it may seem. But replay clearly caught the ball striking Friberg clean in the gut, with his arms playing no role in directing the clearance in one way or another. For Friberg to get out of the way of the ball, he’d have to be Superman.
“It’s an absolute joke,” Scott said about the decision following the match. “The ref knows it. He knows he made a mistake.”
Referee mistakes happen, but they seem to happen to the 2016 Sounders more often than anyone. Seattle has conceded an incredible six penalties in its first 12 games and haven’t had the benefit of a single one. However many of those penalties were justified on second glance is up for discussion, but conceding a penalty every other game isn’t exactly a normal rate of return.
As if to drive home the point that luck was not on Seattle’s side, Jordan Morris, who had an otherwise terrific overall performance, had a sure goal deflected wide from inside the six-yard box in the 84th minute. The frustration was palpable.
Head up, chin up
If the Sounders need a rallying cry at this point in the season, with now three straight losses in the rearview, they need only look back to last summer. At one point from June to August, the Sounders lost eight of nine MLS matches and scored just three goals in that entire stretch. By August 9, they had dropped below the playoff line for the first time all season.
After that, Seattle won nine of its last 10 regular season matches and actually finished on a 10-match unbeaten streak until losing to FC Dallas in the Western Conference Semifinals. Buttressed by a glut of summer signings under then-first year General Manager & President of Soccer Garth Lagerwey, the Sounders used their veteran know-how to easily qualify for the playoffs and even earn hosting duties in the knockout round.
So things may look bleak now, but MLS seasons are long. And this precise team with only a few tweaks went through a valley much, much deeper than
It’s safe to assume the Sounders will sign a name of note with its vacant Designated Player slot, and until then head coach Sigi Schmid still has time to tinker with the pieces. MLS Cups are not won and lost in May.
That said, the Sounders can’t afford to wait much longer to kick on the generator. Another opportunity awaits at midweek with D.C. United.
