No Magic for the Weary

This was the kind of game a magician shines. The kind of player who pulls insanity of of a hat, who flouts every intuitive yet statistically unprovable rule we know about momentum. The kind of player who can never be discounted.

Unfortunately for the Sounders on Wednesday, that player was Kaick, FC Dallas' Brazilian midfielder. A 63rd minute service from Santi Moreno caught a couple headers from Seattle, but as it floated out to the edge of the box, Kaick whipped his foot into the air and scorched the ball inside the far post. Andrew Thomas had a snowball's chance in hell of getting to it. The goal decided the game.

Perhaps the Sounders still lack this kind of player. What's true is that they didn't get the performance they needed from their would-be difference makers against FC Dallas as they lost 1-0.

Dejan Joveljić, who had up to that point had scored four goals in five games with Seattle, had four shots on goal and seven shots in general - racking up 1.1 xG all by himself - but he either found the glove of Dallas' goalkeeper Daniel or missed waiting nets; the rest of the Sounders team followed his lead in missing the back of the net for the entire game.

"It was one of those losses where I felt like we were the better team across the whole game," said Albert Rusnák. "We created enough chances to win the game."

Unfortunately for Seattle, they got another piece of bad news in the injury department, as Nouhou broke his left hand during a collision in the second half.

The Sounders rotated fairly heavily for the weekday fixture.

With a game already in the books the previous Saturday and another set for the following Saturday, Schmetzer made four personnel changes from the selection against the Revs: Snyder Brunell at pivot instead of Hassani Dotson, Stu Hawkins at center back instead of Yeimar, Kalani Kossa-Rienzi at right back instead of Alex Roldan, and Paul Arriola instead of Jordan Morris on the wing (though Arriola was on the left while Seba wheeled over to the right).

Remaining in their Saturday positions were Cristian Roldan at pivot, Nouhou at left back, Jackson Ragen at center back, Rusnák at 10, Deki at nine, and Andrew Thomas at keeper.

Seattle had plenty of chances in the middle third of the first half, but came up empty going into the sheds.

Though the Sounders began the game with a few minutes of possession, Dallas' press was effective in severing connections between the Seattle lines. The hosts played off the counterattack (both from defensive zone pressing and attacking zone counter-pressing whenever the Sounders managed to take a contested ball away) and got a few final third entries in the first five minutes. Though those plays didn't amount to much in terms of chances, the consistent takeaways by Dallas led to the visitors rushing their play and the hosts setting the tone no matter who held the ball or where it was.

The first time Seattle had a good sequence was in the ninth minute as Jackson Ragen sent a clinical pass to Albert Rusnák in front of the box, but they weren't able to turn it into a good look on net.

Momentum resumed for Dallas and culminated in a pair of fairly close shots, one by Bernard Kamungo and the other by Petar Musa. Although Musa wound up having little impact on the game, the home nine was the man the Sounders had been most concerned about going into the fixture; the Croatian had 19 goals in 24 games before Wednesday.

The Sounders finally had clawed back a bit of game control in the 18th, as although they lost the ball during a run of passes on the attack, referee Jon Freemon called a foul on Dallas' Osaze Urhoghide and Seattle had a free kick. Albert sent in the 19th minute ball gorgeously for Ragen along the leading edge of the crowd, and although Ragen got a foot on it, he didn't kick it hard enough to evade Daniel's late dive.

Although the ensuing corner didn't amount to anything, Seattle managed to turn it into some further momentum in the final third, with some solid counterpressing of their own that but a wrench in the works of Dallas' attempted breakaways. Sebastian Gomez sent a cross to Deki near the near post in the 23rd, but although the Serbian flicked a quick roller towards the net, Daniel reacted in time to keep it out of the net.

That was the first of three missed chances for Joveljić around the midpoint of the first half. Another in the 25th was the worst of the three, as Cristian distributed it out to Arriola on the left side and Arriola found Deki in the center of the pitch with a clear lane to the near post - and yet Deki's left-footer skipped two inches outside that post.

The third came after a series of 28th minute passes inside the Dallas box, as Deki brought it into the 18 meter area but went out wide under pressure before receiving the ball from Kalani on the outside and sending a shot towards the left post. But his one-touch attempt was once again too sluggish to get past Daniel.

A few seconds after Seattle once again snatched the ball away in Dallas' midfield, Cristian barreled through two defenders in the 30th minute and got Seattle another free kick. Rusnák took it direct on net in the waning seconds of the 31st, but the skipping shot slowly rolled into Daniel's waiting arms.

The 32nd saw Dallas get their first productive midfield takeaway in quite a while, but just like their earlier flurry, Seattle managed to plug all the holes in the box and all the Toros could get was a nonproductive corner.

Still, Seattle kept getting in their own way even as windows opened again and again. Seba found a lane through to Deki in the 38th minute, but Deki broke out a hair too early and was caught offside.

Seba did have his bad moments, however. He got incredibly lucky in the 40th minute as Ran Binyamin took two seconds too long to trap a cross in open space; had Binyamin taken the near-sure open strike, it would have been on Seba for leaving his man open. Of course, leaving Binyamin open was a thing that multiple Sounders struggled with; a late breakaway in the 45th allowed him to sear a cross in to Musa, but the Dallas striker missed wide with his midair shot. This late flurry came off both Dallas' wing backs, however, with Kamungo driving in and giving Musa another ball in the second minute of first half stoppage, but Seattle kept it out of the net and both sides went into the half scoreless.

One strike in the 63rd made all the difference.

The Sounders never quite recovered the momentum they had for the middle 15 or so minutes of the first half. Until Dallas scored their goal, the hosts had a steadily increasing hold on the flow of the game, with the Sounders giving balls away as they tried to build out of the back and never quite getting a step ahead of the pressure they faced from Dallas.

Were it not for a quick-reacting save from Thomas in the 46th, an early giveaway deep in their own territory would have brought Dallas up 1-0; Thomas himself drifted out of position on a follow-up cross but got away with it thanks to a weak Dallas reception in the penalty area.

Seattle brought the ball forward in the 53rd and passed it among themselves as they looked for a window. Though the touches weren't great on Seattle's end, the Toros kept muffing their takeaways and allowing the Sounders to keep up the attack long enough for Rusnák to flick a pass wide for Arriola along the edge of the box. The problem was that Arriola was just as surprised by Albert's ball out as the defenders were, and he wasn't able to get any control over the ball in time for a good shot.

A collision between Nouhou and Joaquín Valiente pinched Nouhou's arm, and the Sounders left back spent quite a while on the ground before being subbed off for Jordan Morris. Paul Arriola swung around to left back to replace Nouhou positionally to reset the formation and Alex Roldan concurrently swapped on for Kalani.

The challenges from Kamungo had been intense all game; the Dallas left wing back won seven of 12 ground duels and managed to get past Kalani a few times, especially during Dallas' flurries. Schmetzer said he "[didn't] think Kalani had a good game" on Wednesday, and used the first substitution window to place Alex Roldan in that spot.

But where Kalani had been off and on in that role, Alex seemingly had difficulty getting into a groove off the bench. Kamungo breezed past him in the left corner in the early 63rd minute and sent a cross for Binyamin, but it was kept out of Binyamin's reach as Stu Hawkins sent it backwards.

Then came the corner that decided the fate of the game. Up it went off Moreno's boot, Cristian headed it out, then Urhoghide headed it up towards Kaick. The goal was all Kaick.

Seba had a takeaway in attacking territory three minutes after the go-ahead goal, but Seattle wasn't able to convert it into anything big on net, an unfortunate but definite pattern in the final half hour of play.

The Sounders' pressure noticeably slipped once they were down, with clearly timid, back-footed attempts to force the Toros away from the ball during their attacks. Alex seemed to be more back-footed than the rest, but it was the same kind of team-wide shakiness that had dominated the game until the 18th minute foul.

A one-off through ball for Jordan Morris nearly led to an equalizer regardless, but an excellent pressure knocked him off-balance and the shot went wide.

Seattle did eventually get a spell of attacking possession, but continued shakiness from Joveljić (and a notable lack of quickness from a substitute Jesús Ferreira) meant that some quite incredible looks on net amounted to nothing. Where the Dallas looks involved clinical passing that forced Seattle to plug the final line for lack of counterpressing, the Sounders' version looked like players getting good balls in the box but taking eons to trap it and shoot. Corner kicks for the Rave Green were seldom productive as they couldn't contest any aerials, so clearing the ball out behind was a failure mode for any Sounders attack.

It seemed like the visitors were trying to be aggressive but were overcome with the same timidity that had chased them around all half. A stoppage time run up to the edge of the box saw nobody wishing to be the one that ended the late chance - so they all buried that opportunity through their collective reluctance.

Schmetzer didn't see it as a lack of conviction, though, attributing much of it to decision-making in those moments.

"They all had it [the conviction to score], but you know, again, their guys were laying out, blocking shots inside the box," Schmetzer said. "Maybe some of our choices to shoot when there was an extra pass ... in New England, we were making decisions that led to goals."

How long will Nouhou be out? It's unclear at present.

"Broken hand."

That was all Schmetzer said when asked for a status update on Nouhou. The words held in the air once he said them, even with all the reporters asking questions over Zoom for the road fixture.

Later on in the presser, Schmetzer indicated that Paul Arriola might be the next man up for the left back role, though he said they wouldn't know anything until they get back to Seattle.

Perhaps Seattle might ponder a formation change to go along with such a personnel change; Nouhou is better as a defender while Arriola has a more versatile skillset and would perhaps make most sense as more of a wing back. There's a chance, then, that we see a three-in-the-back setup (Ragen-Hawkins-Alex) and a 3-4-2-1 overall structure, but any knock-on effects are about as clear as mud at present.

There was no Deki magic in the air.

A lot of players missed chances on Wednesday; Schmetzer spent a fair amount of time naming missed opportunities that could have won them three points or at least held Dallas to a draw.

"Look at the chances they [Seattle] created in the first half, and I can list them all. I mean, Albert had the ball to Dejan. Jackson on the set piece. Dejan from the penalty spot, the ball gets cut back to him. Half chances here or there. Second half, again Dejan inside the box, Albert's shot, they're [Dallas] blocking things, Jordan's breakaway," Schmetzer said. "I mean, I know the expected goals weren't into the twos or threes, based on what I see, but there was a lot of moments where, we put one of them away - especially in the first half - that game goes different."

But while it's rough enough when guys like Ragen and Arriola miss their chances, it's killer when it's the guy you brought on specifically to put the balls in the net. It seemed like Joveljić started off the game on the right footing, with an early chance as he charged to get a contested ball in the 13th minute and got a touch on it, but Daniel managed to get a touch of his own to deflect it out over the endline for a corner.

The right-footed flick in the 23rd was Deki's best actual one-touch delivery; many a lesser keeper would have been unable to react to it in time to snatch it dead. Had Daniel failed to touch it, it would have been a goal, but had he deflected it, Paul Arriola was waiting to pounce.

The lynchpin of the whole game, in retrospect, was perhaps the 25th minute attempt. Here Joveljić had a truly beautiful opportunity, with an open lane between two defenders that he took advantage of and a whole half of the goal uncovered by Daniel. So often players miss by getting too much air on a ball (Arriola did this quite badly in the waning minutes), but in Deki's case, he didn't get enough, and the ball spun and skipped like a shanked pool cue about two feet off its target.

Perhaps that missed chance stuck in his head for the rest of the game, or perhaps (more likely from a statistical sense) it was just the luck of the draw - I venture to say it was both reinforcing each other - but Joveljić wasn't quite the same for the rest of the contest. He would either hit a ball on net but too weakly, or he would torch it but shank it. The lack of shot quality can be seen in the fact of having more pre-shot xG (standard xG) than post-shot xG (xG on target).

Arriola and Ferreira didn't have much of a notable homecoming, though some of it was bad luck for Arriola.

The quality on the ball from the two ex-Toros - it was Arriola's their first match in Dallas since coming to Seattle - wasn't much to write home about. Naturally, it fills an entire section here; that's because this was an away game.

Given his injury recovery situation, Jesús Ferreira was only available as a substitute on Wednesday, and like a lot of his teammates, he didn't seem to have the quality needed to get Seattle back into it. Coming on in the 66th minute with his team down a goal, he got a pair of touches in the opposition box and quite a few more in the attacking third, but he didn't make quick decisions in those moments and often had to send the ball backwards out of gathering pressure (or he just sent off a ball that went nowhere).

That was an issue that plagued much of the team in the second half, to be fair. Had Albert managed a one-touch shot as the ball fell for him in the 88th minute - a flurry for Seattle; Rusnák noted that the team "threw more bodies forward and tried to create a little bit of chaos in the box" once they went down - he might have taken advantage of the hole that then existed, but as it happened, the ball just found a deflection.

Arriola too was off-kilter, though in a different way. Instead of issues shooting the ball, the Sounders' versatile left winger had issues at times connecting with his teammates. Though his close-range passes were fairly solid, his crosses weren't up to par and he often looked disjointed when other Sounders would get the ball to him.

When Arriola's at his best, he can have a playmaker edge to his play, but that edge was quite dull on Wednesday. Again, that plagued a lot of the team.

Seattle (almost certainly) won't get the luxury of home playoff seeding.

Regardless of what ultimately led to it, the loss lopped quite a bit off the Sounders' remaining ceiling. Though they would have remained in seventh regardless (LAFC won against Austin), it was the difference between 44 points with five to go and 41 points with five to go. Had they won, the Sounders would have been three points back of both San Jose and Dallas, but with the loss, they're six points behind the Quakes and nine behind the Toros.

San Diego is on pace for 55 points, meaning that Seattle has to win every remaining fixture to get to 56 and sneak into fourth place. That is, to put it mildly, highly unlikely.

Given LA Galaxy's 44-point pace, however, the Sounders might be able to evade the play-in with just four more points. They will want to get a better cushion for sure, but their current seventh place is a far cry from missing the dance entirely (as they were at risk of doing for much of the summer).

As things currently stand, the Sounders' first round would come against second-place St. Louis CITY SC, though only one point separates them from the leading Whitecaps.

The Sounders aren't sweating the result too much - should they?

Although the team played an uneasy brand of soccer on Wednesday, they chalked up the difference between a loss and a draw to Kaick's unreal game-winner and the fact that nothing went in during the first half.

"Like, we obviously want to win, and I think that this game hurts, yes, because we feel like we created enough chances to score a goal," said Cristian in Spanish after the game. "But we also satisfied that we created so many chance away from home."

But there was plenty in the final 30 minutes - that is to say, when all the unlucky cards had already fallen - that they could have done to more effectively claw back into the game. Albert talked about trying to create chaos in front of net, but that wasn't the entirety of why they threatened so much in the first half.

The core reason was the precision and control over the game that kept all of Dallas' counterplay under wraps and led to sequences that incised the home defense and allowed those point-blank shots on target. Later on in the game, however, they only managed to rattle off shots from the very edge of the box, often easily blocked or far less difficult for Daniel to grab than the earlier attempts.

Taking a bit of a larger view, the Sounders did manage to get three points in total from a fairly difficult road trip, so the view of the team is colored by their 3-0 thumping of the Revs a few days earlier.

Still, they know that they have to get things done against a low-lying opponent at home on Saturday.

"If we don't take advantage of being at home against Montreal on a short week, then we're going to have some frustrating thoughts," Cristian said.

Whatever they do in the next couple of days, they have to flush the loss and ensure they don't fall into the trap game dynamics.

"Maybe it's a good reset button," Rusnák pondered. "We've had our ups and downs this year, and remember where we were two, three months ago; to be where we are right now, I think it's a step in the right direction."