In a number of ways, this season’s been a historic one for the Seattle Sounders.
Never in MLS history has a team as low in the standings as the Sounders (ninth) as late in the season (August) risen into the playoffs. And not only did the Sounders accomplish the feat, but they finished fourth and earned home field in the Knockout Round. This wasn’t just an impressive feat worthy of remembrance. It was a turnaround no team in MLS history can claim.
Needless to say, the year pulled out a number of memorable moments from the team. Looking back as the Sounders prep for a postseason clash against Sporting Kansas City on Thursday (7 p.m. PT; FS1/UniMas/KIRO 97.3 FM/El Rey 1360AM), here’s a look at the five most defining moments of the year.
Jordan Morris Gets His Goal
After five games as a professional, Jordan Morris had yet to score. This wasn’t entirely strange, but the late offseason departure of Obafemi Martins thrust the rookie from Stanford into a more prominent role than perhaps anyone expected. The Sounders needed Morris to score goals more than they imagined when they’d made official his Homegrown deal in January.
And then it happened and the floodgates broke. Morris’s pro career might’ve officially started on March 6. But you could argue it didn’t really begin until his goal against the Philadelphia Union on April 16.
In the grand scheme the goal was nothing special - Morris finished a deep ball with a poke past the keeper en route to a 2-1 win. But in hindsight it fanned the flames for a regular season in which Morris scored 12 goals, more than any American rookie in MLS history. The goal also imbued Morris with the confidence to go on a run of four goals in four games less than two months into his pro career. You could see the star blinking into existence in the Sounders firmament.
Brian Schmetzer Takes Over
Whenever it happened, transitioning out of the Sigi Schmid era and into a new one was never going to be particularly easy. Schmid’s identity was basically the Sounders identity, given the two had been wedded since the team joined MLS in 2009. That meant every player had been vetted by Schmid, the academy had been formed under his auspices and its system had been molded around Schmid’s style.
That all changed, however subtly, when longtime assistant Brian Schmetzer took the reins this summer.
Schmid and the Sounders parted ways after a 3-0 loss to Sporting KC on July 24. Schmetzer, who once coached the USL Sounders, took over in his stead. The day-to-day operations weren’t drastically different - Schmetzer often helped run practices under Schmid - but the product on the field shifted subtly.
Schmid had become wedded to a 4-3-3 in the attack that the team never quite took to without Martins, for whom the system was partially built around. Schmetzer wasn’t shy about formally changing the formation to a 4-2-3-1. It’s stood the test of time, with absences from key cogs like Clint Dempsey and Andreas Ivanschitz hardly slowing it down. Schmetzer clearly galvanized the locker room as well, proving a major turning point for the season. Under Schmetzer, the Sounders are 8-2-4 after a 6-12-2 start.
Nicolas Lodeiro Changes The Dynamic
There are players who provide sparks, and then there are players who provide full-fledged coal fires. Nicolas Lodeiro was the latter for the Sounders.
Lodeiro’s arrival coincided with the ascendancy of Schmetzer almost to the minute. That allowed the two to develop a stirring rapport together, although it hasn’t always been the exact same tactically. With Dempsey central, Lodeiro began his Sounders tenure as the wide right peg in the 4-2-3-1, but that shifted to his more natural central role once Dempsey went out for the year.
No matter where Lodeiro’s been deployed, he’s been a defense wrecker.
Players who join MLS midseason typically have a difficult time winning MLS MVP honors for that reason, but nobody in that role has had a better case than Lodeiro. In 13 regular season games, Lodeiro chalked up four goals and eight assists. And don’t forget, he did all this in a foreign league and missing almost zero time to acclimatize. In fact, the only game Lodeiro’s missed since joining was due to card accumulation. Otherwise, he’s been almost perfect, and the Sounders assuredly wouldn’t be here without him.
Clint Dempsey’s Season Ends Abruptly
Over the past three-plus years, no face has been more front-and-center for the Sounders as an organization than Dempsey’s. The longtime U.S. national team star has scored in buckets since joining the club in 2013, and he looked like a rejuvenated player when Lodeiro joined the team.
And then the unthinkable struck. After scoring five goals in his previous three games, Dempsey was left off the travel roster for a midweek tilt in Houston in late August. A few days later, he was withheld for what was diagnosed as an irregular heartbeat. A few weeks after that, the Sounders learned it would end his season.
It was a difficult blow on a few levels. For one, Dempsey, 33, has been one of the two or three most visible American faces in terms of global soccer visibility over the last decade. Dempsey’s scored goals in multiple World Cups and in three and a half seasons he has 34 goals and 22 assists for the Sounders. It’s hard to beat those numbers, and removing a player like that from the lineup was always going to have consequences.
But the most difficult part of the diagnosis was in its uncertainty. The first concern was always for the man, and then for the soccer player second. Whether or not it would end his career was certainly a topic of discussion, but Sounders (and USMNT) fans simply wanted to be sure Dempsey was healthy beyond the field. When it was announced in late September Dempsey wouldn’t return in 2016, leaving his longterm career in doubt, few announcements impacted the soccer community with such resonance.
Roman Torres Returns
Throughout the course of the season, it felt like the Sounders had an MVP candidate consigned to the rehab center. As much as the Sounders’ defense did to keep it in games over the first five months of the season, the prospect of bringing back Roman Torres was never far out of mind.
Torres was tragically lost for an extended period when he tore a knee ligament on Sept. 12, 2015 against San Jose. The team didn’t know how long it’d take Torres to return to full health, but if you’d quizzed club brass they certainly would’ve hoped it’d take less than a full calendar year. And yet it was almost exactly that long between starts for Torres (363 days to be exact). And boy did the Sounders realize what they were missing when he returned.
Lodeiro will get most of the on-field plaudits for the turnaround, but Torres’ impact was the engine behind the engine. In fact, since earning his first start of the year on Sept. 9, the Sounders have three shutouts and are a sterling 5-1-2. Torres only got four starts in 2015 after joining the team pairing alongside Chad Marshall, but it almost looked like he never left the lineup. He was that steady and uncompromising.
The Sounders’ defense was never really the core of the issue during the deepest part of their swoon in 2016. But it gave up too many soft chances and made enough mistakes that its attack was unable to keep up. When Torres rejoined the starting XI not long after Lodeiro started his MLS odyssey, the Sounders proved themselves as a worthy playoff team.
