Final home match fits mold

The Seattle Sounders drew the Vancouver Whitecaps on Saturday, as both teams kept clean sheets, Seattle with its back line and Vancouver with its keeper. They largely outplayed Vancouver, but as has happened many times this year, they weren’t able to convert their chances, leading to the day’s draw.

The first half saw both teams get opportunities but neither capitalize. Leo Chú twice drove the ball up the right side of the field and crossed it to Jordan Morris, who twice botched his end of the play, the first time (in the 12^th) arriving slightly late and kicking it out of bounds, the second time (in the 16^th) running by too early and missing the ball entirely.

Meanwhile, the Whitecaps got three corners in as many minutes between the 20^th and 22^nd, but failed to execute properly on any of them, and Yeimar eventually booted the ball downfield to end their threat.

Seattle had one more good opportunity in the half. At the end of the thirtieth minute, Alex Roldan crossed to Morris in the box, who flicked it back to Chú, whose shot was gobbled up by Takaoka.

A similar pattern showed in the second half. Both in the 49^th and the 57^th, Leo Chú crossed to Lodeiro, who kicked it right at Takaoka, while in the 56^th, Morris again fell out of position as the ball was crossed to him.

Vancouver’s best chance of the half came as Adekugbe put a cross right to a wide-open Gauld in the box, but luckily for Seattle, his kick caromed off the left post. Other than that, though, Seattle’s defense kept the Whitecaps from even getting a single shot on goal for the entire game.

The Sounders had more chances but failed to capitalize, largely due to Takaoka’s outstanding performance in net for the Whitecaps. He made a fantastic save in the 79^th, batting away a Rusnák shot on target, and made another in the 6^th minute of stoppage, diving to deflect Cristian Roldan’s attempt at a second game-winner in as many nights.

The game ended up being a decent summary of a lot of the Sounders’ season. They had 57.2% of the possession and 17 shots to Vancouver’s 4, but they weren’t able to break anything past the opposing keeper. So it has been for much of 2023.

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Schmetzer attributed some of the offensive woes to injury, but also left open the possibility of moving Morris around or changing up the set pieces for the playoffs.

“Not having Raúl for large parts of the year certainly hurts. Not having Cristian for large parts of the year certainly hurts. I’ve though Héber has actually shown a bit of form recently, so I’m happy about that. Jordan, obviously, playing as a 9 versus out of the wing, that’s something we need to revisit, maybe,” he stated. “The other thing that we’re going to start working on is, again, I think we’ve been pretty good in this stat, but set pieces in playoff games, when games are tight. You know, maybe we need to throw a few more wrinkles there.”

On the other end of the field, Schmetzer praised the defense and their ability to keep Vancouver’s powerful duo in check.

“Long balls and picking up second balls, that’s where Vancouver has a lot of success, because Ryan Gauld’s movement off of Brian White is really good. You know, they have counter-movements, Gauld always seems to pick the ball up in certain moments,” he observed. “So, credit to Josh, credit to JP, Yeimar, Jackson. it was a battle.”

Stef said similar things, both about the game on Saturday but also about the season as a whole.

“We were able to get a decent amount of shutouts [over the season], and even the games where we did give up goals, [we had] a lot of one goal against games,” he said. “It’s a testament to the defense I’ve had in front of me, they’ve been able to limit opponents’ weapons. Gauld today had the best chance for them, but it was a difficult one, and it was on his weaker foot.”

With their tie over the weekend, the Sounders dropped into third place in the Western Conference, behind St. Louis in first and LAFC in second. Here are top nine in the standings at present:

1.       St. Louis CITY SC, 17-11-5, 56 points

2.       LAFC, 14-10-9, 51 points

3.       Seattle Sounders, 13-9-11, 50 points

4.       Houston Dynamo, 13-11-9, 48 points

5.       Vancouver Whitecaps, 12-10-11, 47 points

6.       Real Salt Lake, 13-12-7, 46 points

7.       Portland Timbers, 11-12-10, 43 points

8.       San Jose Earthquakes, 10-10-13, 43 points

9.       FC Dallas, 10-10-12, 42 points

The Sounders have one more game this season on the road against St. Louis on October 21^st. After that, they have the playoffs. Hopefully they can start putting the ball in the net by then.