Sounders Drop Two Points at Home to SDFC - But They Didn't Lose

SEATTLE - Somehow, the Sounders didn't lose this game. Somehow, the Sounders didn't win this game. Given the way these two sides played, it was one of those games that ends in heartbreak or hectic celebration, a final goal that improbably goes in off a chance that makes no sense.

There were surely some from many corners of the world who had this game as their first introduction to MLS. It was quite a beautiful introduction. Pacific Northwest grit shined through despite things going horribly wrong in almost every conceivable way over the first 80 minutes. And yet it was two dropped points at home to a lower-mid table team in a season where the Sounders are trying to get a Supporter's Shield.

Head coach Brian Schmetzer clearly thought the team had missed an opportunity, with a comment that there were "a lot of ifs, ands, or buts" and saying the following about the disconnect between the team's actual form and the feeling in the clubhouse:

Cristian's thoughts on the game and the team's mini-draw rut were similar.

"Yeah, we feel like we've lost four points," the captain said, referencing the previous match on the road against Sporting KC. "My error in Kansas City, creating a bunch of chances in Kansas City and in this game - yeah, it's very difficult to lose these four points because we believe we can be very good. But it's part of soccer, we have to improve."

Seattle gave up an ugly early goal as Nouhou fell off his man in the first half.

The Sounders started with plenty of aggression, plainly confident in their ability to slice through San Diego pressure with balls up, and as confidence so often does, it indeed produced some attacking quality.

Snyder Brunell shined brightest in the first 10 minutes, sending an incredible touch up the left side to Nouhou that nearly turned into an utterly electric chance up front. Paul Rothrock sent the ball into open space and Nouhou nearly had the chance to take a screamer on a practically open net, but the left back caught the business end of a brilliant tackle and the chance dissipated. The 31,528 fans in the grandstands clamored for a foul - the beginning of a match-long dispute between them and referee Armando Villarreal.

But Seattle couldn't find that consistent open space, even though their passes were clinical and their pressing appeared to completely snuff out SDFC's ability to create.

Emphasis on "appeared to". The 19th minute saw Nouhou and Jackson Ragen fall out of place as Anibal Godoy and Onni Valakari combined to give a deadly chip to Marcus Ingvartsen, who therefore completely broke the line and had an open-except-Andrew Thomas shot on net. He landed the ball beyond Thomas' grasp and the Sounders were playing from behind.

Momentum utterly shifted at that goal. It gave a spike of energy and confidence to the visitors while seeming to stun Seattle's theretofore rock-solid play. San Diego threw themselves down the field several times after in the following minutes, with Amahl Pellegrino sending a floater over the crowd that briefly caught Thomas off-guard before he dove and scraped a save out of what had nearly been a disastrous double-up.

For his part, Schmetzer saw the post-goal shift in game state as more a factor of SDFC gaining a surge in confidence than Seattle falling into a daze.

"Maybe it's more the other team gained some momentum, because in the first 15 minutes of the game, I thought we were playing very well," Schmetzer said. "And they scored the goal, and San Diego became a little bit bigger. But I'm not so sure we were shocked, we're a veteran team."

From my view in the press box, it was both. While Seattle was able to recover from that flurry and regain some opportunities, they never quite regained their earlier ironclad grip. Kalani Kossa-Rienzi had a few takeaways, though he gave one back that Alex Roldan had to recover.

On offense, the Sounders always seemed to lack the finish, though the reasons were many. The one time Seattle did get an incredible connection, with Jesús Ferreira fulfilling a near-perfect transition ball to Jordan Morris in the 31st minute that the striker knocked in the back of the net ... near-perfect because the offsides flag went up and the Sounders were still scoreless.

Seattle produced a pair of corners in the 36th minute, but as would continue for the rest of the half, a Paul Rothrock touch was a little too strong - despite a good starting point for the shot, it flew over the crossbar and Seattle once more missed the chance to equalize.

A run of possession in the 40th minute was instructive of the mental shift the Sounders had undergone. While earlier in the match, Alex Roldan might have taken a pass through pressure to try and create something centrally, by that time in the half, the trio of he, Kalani, and JF traded it between each other for about a minute and a final pass up to Cristian ended up smothered. Seattle recovered the ball downfield, but these kinds of plays were all too common in that part of the game.

So too were breakdowns in connection between Morris and Albert Rusnák. Playing the ball in a false nine fashion, Morris had a couple of passes to Albert that the latter failed to pick up on in time - the reverse happened in the third minute of stoppage as Morris failed to pick up an action by Rusnák - and much of the playmaking duties ended up in Ferreira's court.

Seattle tried and tried and tried as the second half wore on, but with time running out, they finally punched in an equalizer.

The hunt for the equalizer continued into the second half. Brunell came the closest early on, driving into the right side of the box off a ball from Kalani and grazing the mouth of the net by mere inches as the ball curled away from the far post and flew over the touchline. Brunell held his head in his hands as he got up.

Transition moments continued for San Diego. Nouhou bailed his teammates out in the 54th minute as Ingvartsen had worked past Alex and Kalani beforehand. The issues were compounded as both Brunell and Cristian went into the books with yellows within a minute of each other with more than 30 minutes remaining in the half.

Schmetzer put his first pair of substitutions into the match in the 63rd minute, subbing out Brunell and Kalani for Danny Musovski and Peter Kingston. The latter went into the right wing back role while Danny went up top and Morris moved over to the right wing and Albert fell back a line.

The subs had a clear goal: fill the game with attacking players. By this point, the SDFC defense had fallen snugly into a low block, with the visitors looking to eke out the three points on blocked shot after blocked shot (while looking for the occasional takeaway) and Seattle needing to break through to at least get a point out of the match.

A couple of heavy flurries around the midpoint of the half led, once again, to bupkis. J-Mo reached his quota of bizarre hesitations with a swivel on the ball deep into the box, while a series of corners and throw-in opportunities fell by the wayside in every which way imaginable. The fans at one point chanted the classic "Ref, you suck!" and at another chanted "V-A-R", the latter after a potential handball in the box against San Diego fell away due to an earlier foul.

The team on the field shared some of the annoyance as luck fell again and again away from them.

"I haven't looked at the replay, I just saw the handball that could have been," Cristian said of the play. "You know, those things happen so much, those blocks, and so it's always frustrating when it gets called against you ... live, I didn't feel like there was much, but I haven't seen the replay."

If nothing else, it was great schadenfreude for Timbers fans who have to put up with Phil Neville game-in and game-out.

Of course, the Phil Neville Experience™ is great schadenfreude the other way. Such is the nature of the rivalry.

Things got truly comical as the 80th minute approached. Twice the Sounders got three numbers about two inches from the goal line, all with the ball, and yet the ball found every limb of every possible adjacent defender as the world's most bizarre hex came over the likes of Musovski, Ferreira, and Morris. Musovski knocked one off the post, but it was the legion of blocks that kept San Diego's lead hanging on by the thinnest of threads, the proverbial sole strand of horsehair.

Some stats from the game: 52 Sounders touches in the opposition box, 26 total Sounders shots, 20 shots in the box, 13 shots off target, 11 accurate Sounders crosses, nine SDFC blocks, eight Seattle corners, seven big chances, five second half yellows, five Sounders shots on target, four big chances in the second half, three anti-ref chants from the Lumen Field crowd, 2.53 xG for Seattle, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Seattle had as many shots as San Diego had touches in the opposition box. Seattle had a box touch ratio of exactly 2-to-1.

If this game were to go unequalized, it would be the world's dumbest way to end a home no-loss streak that extended all the way back to the Club World Cup.

Just when I thought their ways to not score couldn't possibly get any dumber, the Sounders went and did something like this ... AND TOTALLY REDEEMED THEMSELVES!

Okay, not totally. They still drew against a 3-5-4 San Diego FC team, after all. At home. It wasn't a very heartening result. But they managed to not lose (as you'll see in a few paragraphs, they very nearly threw that away). With the absolutely sour luck they had fallen victim to all game, that was a victory in and of itself.

Chances kept coming as the final minutes wore on. The brightest was an 87th minute ball that Musovski sent into open space for Kingston a few meters beyond the penalty area. Kingston launched for the open upper far corner; had he made the go-ahead likely game-winner, the chaos in Lumen might have caused an earthquake. As things stood, it was another long, drawn out ooooh from the crowd.

The Sounders nearly found a way to lose in the final minute of stoppage. Alex Roldan found himself outplayed by Anders Dreyer in the edge of the box, and although Dreyer's shot went off the body of Thomas. Ingvartsen had a beautiful opportunity to score and hand the Sounders an objectively hilarious - but no less utterly painful - loss.

Ingvartsen, in true MLS fashion, airmailed the chip shot and the game remained tied.

If you thought this game had already seen its share of controversial reffing from Armando Villarreal, well, perhaps you aren't quite familiar enough with the exquisite joys of MLS. Paul Rothrock fell in contact as the 95th minute was inching to its conclusion. Over thirty myriad spectators waited for one last set piece, a free kick and a chance to somehow get three points out of one of the strangest fixtures this year has yet seen.

Villarreal waved it off, then called game. "Ref, you suck!" once more roared from the home crowd. It was one point from either side. All of that and it was a draw.

Is Danny Musovski the gathering favorite at striker?

Moose got his first regular season goal on Saturday night. Like his team, he had desperately sought a goal in those waning minutes of the first half, finally punching in the equalizer in the 80th.

"You know, Musovski's goal is a classic Danny Musovski goal," Schmetzer said of the play. "He reads where the ball's gonna be - inside the six, inside the 18, he's a poacher - and he gets in front of the guy on the corner and he scores ... we'll keep running guys out there until we get one guy to really make the position his own."

As things currently stand, the Sounders have three potential strikers: Jordan (who began the game there), Musovski (who finished there) and Osaze de Rosario (currently in something of a limbo). While it isn't clear where exactly things will go, when the topic came to Musovski, Schmetzer gave the slightest glimpse on a potential decision.

"You know, I gotta reflect on my lineup choices, how we started the game," Schmetzer said as he shared a collection of general thoughts in the postmatch presser.

That comment, more than anything, is potentially a window into the internal thought processes of the team. Jordan Morris actually did have a really solid striker run - the offside non-goal - but perhaps the team is moving closer to a decision about putting Musovski as the head of the striker corps.

With Moose up top, Seattle was able to get a bunch of touches in the box. The connection between the forwards is clear when there's a combination of JF, Musovski, and Morris up there, as was evident in the final 30 minutes of the match on Saturday. But there was a whole lot of hesitation with the ball; though the blocks by SDFC were soemthing Seattle just had to deal with, shooting the ball when they had the chance was something the home side had control over.

Cristian saw the team's performance up top through a bifurcated lens.

When there is a clear item to be worked on, it's a lot easier to mentally attack that problem and figure out what has to be done. Musovski, for his part, had a more positive outlook going into Wednesday's match.

"We're definitely creating chances, there's definitely some things you could look at as positives," Musovski said. "I've always said it as a forward, it's not so much looking at the goals you score, but how many chances and times you're able to put yourself in dangerous spots. Overall, we've done that; I think the goals will start flowing."

It's probably a good thing for the striker to have confidence.

Examining the Narratives.

We all know that grand narratives spring up seemingly by themselves in sports. Sometimes, someone somewhere with an audience sees something, says something, and lo and behold, we're comparing Snyder Brunell and Riqui Puig. See my above notes on Musovski. Other times, it's a simple reading of a statline that creates a narrative; though many key stats are often misunderstood or misapplied - guys, xG is a descriptive metric and not inherently predictive, though it can have plenty of predictive value.

The narrative that the Sounders are frauds is in part driven by the xG. The team has MLS' 11th-best xG differential at 1.8 (16.23 xG for - 14.43 xG against). They're seventh best in the latter but 10th worst in the former.

When it comes to American Soccer Analysis' Goals Added (g+) - here is an explanation - the Sounders sit 12th in the table with a 1.62 differential (12.16 g+ for - 10.54 g+ against). They're 8th worst in MLS in the g+ for category; on the other hand, 10.54 g+ against is the third best in the league behind only the Caps (6.21) and the Crew (9.51); what we can conclude from this is obviously that relocation fights make you really good at defense.

I kid. The highest individual field g+ on the Sounders is Jackson Ragen's 1.28. Nouhou is second with 0.56. The latter isn't especially high on the leaderboard, but it speaks to the defense.

What really speaks to the defense? Andrew Thomas' 5.22 g+, third-best in the league. Keepers, due to the nature of their position, rack up g+ at a far greater rate than field players and so ASA counts them differently. Nevertheless, he is one of three keepers who have more g+ than Lionel Messi.

All this comports more with what we've seen in the last three league games (four goals for, three goals against) than the first seven (12-4 in goals). The point is that if the Sounders continue their current underlying pace, the advanced numbers suggest that regression would be imminent and whatever Shield hopes the team currently has would fall to the wind like the proverbial three sheets of a local barfly.

If they actually start to produce more g+ and xG - stat-speak for "make better opportunities" - they won't have to necessarily worry about the luck as much. This is, in plain English, what Musovski was talking about.

And for the players on the field, it means confidence. This goes for any sport: confidence and conviction have its own effect on things. They affect all the players on the field somewhat as if they were magic of the mind, as was clear to see in the first half pre- and post-SDFC goal.

Here's the other narrative: Fortress Lumen. Seattle hasn't lost a match at home since dropping a CWC game 2-0 to PSG, something that has clearly become well-known around the Sounders clubhouse.

"Yeah, It's a good stat; sometimes I get nervous about that stat because at some point, that is gonna go away," Schmetzer said of the no-loss streak. "But I have to give credit to the guys."

As to how that will affect things, that is yet to be told. Seattle has its next fixture on Wednesday against the San Jose Earthquakes. A weekday Heritage Cup will be a big test for the Sounders, as the Quakes sit atop the Western Conference with 29 points. If they want to stay in the Shield race, the Sounders have to get the three points.