Scoring is Overrated Right? My 5 Takeaways from the Home Opener

It was a beautiful winter night in Seattle as the Sounders hosted Austin FC on Saturday night

Not only was it the first home game of the 2024 season, the Sounders honored the honey badger himself, Ozzie Alonso as he signed a one-day contract to retire as a Sounder! (hopefully, the Sounders do the same for a certain Uruguayan #10…) Cheers echoed throughout the stadium, the strobe lights were bright as hell, and it’s possible that tears may have been shed.

However, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses as the Sounders disappointingly drew 0-0 with Austin after taking 23 shots with 14 in the box.

Here are my five takeaways from the match.

Jordan Morris’ Time is Nearly Up

If you follow me on Twitter (I refuse to call it X. Go to hell, Elon), you’d know how much I hate seeing Jordan play as the striker. I have a whole article written up, just waiting to be posted but I’m waiting until he can prove me wrong to post. Anyway, back to the game today. Against a slow and honestly fairly shit Austin FC side, Morris got into some decent positions to score but could not put the damn ball in the back of the net. This has been a pattern for some time and it feels like his time as a striker is about up.

In the game against Austin, Jordan Morris, our starting striker, who played 90+ minutes, IN MLS, only had 19 touches.

19 TOUCHES

Raul came on around the 70th minute and had the same amount of touches and was so much more dangerous than Jordan was for 90. This happened last week against LAFC too despite drawing the penalty for Pedro de la Vega’s first goal. Idk if it’s tactics or lack of footballing ability, but there is no reason a starting striker should only have 19 touches in 90+ minutes. Either Andy Rose needs to adjust his attacking play, or Schmetz needs to step in and take care of things himself.

I know what people are going to say, “But he scored 12 league goals for us last year!” To that I say, what else did you do beside that? He was constantly out of position, did not hold up the ball, “pressed” until he could barely move, and did not contribute much else to the matches.

Rant over. Keep an eye out for a more in depth Jordan Morris article if he keeps up this rough patch.

Allergic to the Goal? Probably

The Sounders had this problem last year and it’s already looking like those problems are carrying over into the 2024 season. The Sounders haven’t scored a regular season goal from open play in over 230 minutes. For a team that wants to compete for the Supporters Shield and MLS Cup, that’s just sad.

I know xG is kind of a stupid stat to go off of, but it’s still something we should take note of; of the 23 shots that were taken against Austin, the Sounders only generated an xG(expected goals) of 1.4. That’s actually makes it even worse when you put it that way.

The best statistical chance of the game came in the 92nd minute when Raul hit an absolutely beautiful volley right off the crossbar. The AppleTV commentators called it world class but you can only classify it as world class if it actually goes in the back of the net. If anything, the ball from Atencio was world class. That particular chance was only valued at 0.17 xG. And that was the best opportunity of the night. You need to generate better chances than that if you actually want to score goals.

It’s only the second match of the year and I’m sure it’ll get better as the season goes on and players come back from injury. But for now, it’s something the Sounders need to address and fix quickly before we fall even further behind.

WHY CAN’T WE STAY HEALTHY

It feels like it’s the same old shit every year. The Sounders have an injury crisis, they play fairly boring football, and then everyone comes back and we make a big push. It’s nice that the Sounders always make a comeback. But for once I’d just like to see the team be healthy for a good chunk of the season. I don’t think that’s asking for much. As we speak, our new big shining star, Pedro de la Vega, is out for eight weeks after looking really good in the first two games.

Going into the game this weekend against Philadelphia, we won’t have Pepo, JP, Frei, Nathan (maybe?), Reed, Rodrigues, and Leo Chu had some cramps on Saturday so he’ll probably be limited. Idk if it’s what Brian Schmetzer is doing in training, training staff, player fitness, or the new turf. Regardless of what it is, something needs to change and change fast.

The Continued Rise of Josh Atencio

I’ve been a massive Atencio fan since the end of the 2022 season when he really started to show his quality. However, it wasn’t really until last season when we saw how good the kid really was. Fans were clamoring for him to play more and partner with JP in the midfield for so long last year. Once Schmetz finally plugged Atencio into the midfield, he showed exactly why he deserved to start. The midfield pairing of Atencio and JP was one of the best in MLS and despite JP’s current injury, will probably be one of the best again in 2024.

Against Austin, Josh earned Man of the Match honors after taking control of the midfield essentially on his own. He started as an 8 but almost played like a scuedo #10. He had 81% passing accuracy, had a whopping 107 touches, and won most of his defensive duels. The kid was everywhere. He had some of the best chances on goal as well but he’s not much of a goal scorer. I’m excited to see how much he can grow this season and what the future holds for him. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed for no injuries.

Andrew Thomas: Frei’s Successor

I had my doubts going into the season once I heard about Stefan Frei’s injury. I knew Andrew Thomas was a decent enough keeper but he hadn’t played a single minute in MLS and I was scared. BUT, the dude proved me and plenty of others wrong. He didn’t have much to deal with against Austin, because they’re so shit without Druissi, he still did a good job at commanding the defense. Despite getting scored on twice in his MLS debut against LAFC, I thought he had a solid game and shaked off the nerves fairly quickly.

With Frei out for at least another week, Andrew Thomas will have another week between the sticks. If he continues playing like this, you’d have to imagine that he could just take the #1 spot from Frei as the season progresses.

All photo creds go to our newest photographer, Leroy Freeman! Check out his website and his Instagram!

https://photographybylee.smugmug.com