Tabarnak de Câlisse

SEATTLE - Montreal's Alexis Sánchez flops to the ground to try get a foul in the box. The ball goes out to Wiki Carmona, who sends off a point-blank shot with Andrew Thomas barely in his line of sight - and he doinks it off the post. A now wildly offside Sánchez gets the ball back and sends it to a teammate, who in turn bounces it off the post. Not that it would have mattered (the flag was already up), but the lack of cohesion, coordination, or finishing ability of any kind in that whole 89th minute sequence was emblematic of how the 1-1 draw went.

33,007 fans streamed into Lumen Field on Saturday night as the Sounders took on CF Montréal. Seattle came into the game jockeying for playoff position with a host of other sides in the Western Conference while Montréal sat aimlessly at the bottom of the East, but that wasn't apparent from the night's scoreline.

It is often said that one should not wrestle with a pig; both will get dirty but the pig will enjoy it. The Sounders got in a physical match with their visitors and at times looked the worse team. In truth, the Sounders were merely acting like a bad side while Le CFM is actually that bad. Distinguishable mistakes had to build into a cascade to give the visitors all the chances they had at their disposal, yet every time but one, Montreal coughed it back up to Seattle in one ugly way after another.

Comparatively speaking, the first half was far worse for Seattle than the second. The Sounders were incredibly flat coming out of the gate, looking as if they were multiple seconds behind opponents that dominated the physical game, dominated first and second balls, and constantly kept Seattle in a seeming haze.

It was a quick goal in the first half that, unlike in some previous fixtures, rang out as a bullhorn that the team was putting up an awful showing. Montreal, again, is one of the worst teams in MLS. SKC is, too, and for a lot of that game (though the Sounders ended up winning it), Seattle struggled against their physical play, too. This is clearly a pattern developing late in the season.

Did they spend so much time working on breaking low blocks that they're now flummoxed by close pressure? Do they have a set of physical tells that other teams are picking up on when they challenge for the ball? If so, is that tell a simple lack of confidence that permeates the line? Why is the team so dependent on an early-game foul call to get a physical opponent to pull back, rather than meaningfully contesting the physical space? These are questions the Sounders need to ask themselves.

Sure, Seba Gomez bailed them out of a loss with a second half missile and the team looked more serviceable in the final 45, but as Cristian Roldan said, the Sounders need to fight every minute, game-in and game-out.

"Frustrating to have a half like that. During the game, I'm thinking, every pass seems to be sloppy and they're winning every second ball," Cristian said. "I'm glad we adjusted and I'm glad we showed up in the second half, but we have to have 90-minute performances to get results."

Jackson Ragen and Stu Hawkins were unavailable entirely while Caden Clark started on the wing.

It wasn't clear at the beginning of the game, but Jackson Ragen was out with the flu while Stu Hawkins had hamstring tightness. Schmetzer put Ryan Sailor into the center back position instead - the most notable rotation from Wednesday - in a line with Yeimar as his fellow center back and Nouhou and Alex Roldan on the left and right, respectively. Cristian Roldan and Hassani Dotson were the pivots once more while Albert Rusnák at 10 was flanked by Jordan Morris on his left and Caden Clark on his right. Dejan Joveljić was the striker, as is standard.

After the game was done (really after the first half had rolled in so disastrously), Schmetzer openly pondered whether he had put in the right lineup. He certainly didn't feel like the XI he rolled out was his true top team, noting the work that still has to go into setting a full lineup.

Even 88% of the way through the regular season, the Sounders still don't have a starting XI. That's certainly one way to put how the Sounders haven't lived up to their expectations in 2026.

The Sounders' first half wasn't exactly MLS Cup material.

There's the 5-1 Kakisteia, so let's not get ahead of ourselves as to putting this up there with the worst halves of the season for Seattle.

But boy oh boy did the Sounders drop the ball in the first 45 minutes. The issues that the team has had in some of their recent games - the ones that sunk them on Wednesday - were in full force, but unlike in their recent fixtures, they really had no answer in the first half.

Seattle came out of the box quite slowly, unable to deal with a high press from Montreal as they shrank in the face of physical challenges from their opponents. This has been a persistent pattern in the last few games no matter the quality of their opponents, and on Saturday, they looked somewhere between one and three seconds behind Montreal at all times. Le CFM was able to easily slice and dice around the hosts nearly every time they tried to counterpress or get something going on the home side.

This zapped the Sounders a mere 13 minutes into the action. Albert made a bad pass under pressure backwards intended for Dotson, easily intercepted by Montreal winger Hennadiy Synchuk. Sánchez picked it up off Synchuk and dumped it downfield for Noah Streit in the left center of the pitch; Streit and Synchuk rushed towards the Sounders box with only Sailor even in the vicinity of the play (Nouhou and Alex were far upfield and ran into the box far too late to prevent the goal).

Perhaps a better center back than Ryan Sailor could have stalled out the momentum long enough for Nouhou and Alex to get there and plug the gaps, but Ryan Sailor was not a better center back; he tumbled over himself and Streit was easily able to find a wide-open Synchuk, who fired it into the back of the net.

1-0 Montreal. Without an early foul to take the edge of their opponents' physical game, the Sounders had been roundly punished for their slow start. The crowd turned sour

The Sounders had clearly been rattled after that opening goal. Cristian whiffed on a pass sent directly towards him in the 18th minute while both he and Dotson weren't making good passes.

Seattle finally managed to hold possession for a few minutes around the midpoint of the half, but they didn't try to do anything besides sequences of short passes. No long balls, few attempts along the sides, and on the occasion they did move side-to-side without going around with the back line, they didn't create any overloads - they just sent it through Caden Clark to a lone winger along the edge.

The first shot on goal the hosts had came in the 30th minute as they managed to get an aerial ball in for Jordan Morris, who headed it towards the net, but Montreal keeper Sébastian Breza easily grabbed it.

A Montreal breakaway in the 40th nearly doubled their lead as Sailor once again struggled to get back in time, but the visitors failed to coordinate in the box and the cross went nowhere. The spurt of energy in mid-half, however sloppy it had manifested itself, was nowhere to be seen in the final minutes, and had Montreal even been a decent side up front, Seattle could have found themselves down multiple goals.

An image that remains in my head is that of Andrew Thomas Alabama-slamming his glove on the ground in anger after a Montreal free kick found its way past a Sounders back line entirely full of players that didn't jump to try and head it away. The ball went errantly over the endline, but Thomas was clearly pissed.

The boos rained down.

The Lumen crowd was not happy with the performance in the first half. They weren't streaming out of the stadium like they did against Portland - after all, the game wasn't over like it had been when the Timbers racked up goal after goal on the Rave Green in the second half, but the Sounders had still come out to an awful 45 minutes against one of the worst teams in MLS.

According to Schmetzer, it was a topic he brought up postgame.

"I talk about it. I don't hold anything back. I told them that, yeah, you guys deserved to get booed. I deserved to get booed, me! Because I'm the one that's in charge. So I didn't like it as I walked off, but I have to accept it," Schmetzer said. "It's part of sports. Those people pay money, they want to come and be entertained. They wanna have their team actually work and fight and do the things that, even if you lose, you can show that they care. So I have to accept it. So do they."

Thomas, whose frustrations had been so evident, hit on plenty of the same points in the locker room.

"We can't have halves like that," Cristian said. "If we're trying to compete for a good spot in the playoffs, we can't come out flat against teams, especially at home."

Thomas made sure to specify that the letdown was team-wide - and included himself - even if a lot of the issues happened further up the pitch.

"It was a collective poor performance, so it was gonna take the collective to get us out of it," Thomas said. "And I thought we played better [in the second half], but still not quite what we needed it to be, obviously."

Seba Gomez bailed the Sounders out of utter embarrassment, but the Sounders couldn't complete the comeback.

Schmetzer rarely makes a sub at halftime. He made two on Saturday, taking out Caden Clark for Seba Gomez and Alex Roldan for Kalani Kossa-Rienzi.

Seattle took its first corner of the game in the 48th. Upon learning this fact, Charles Hamaker of Circling Seattle Sports (seated two chairs over from me in the press box) uttered the phrase "this is not hype or aura" - for our non-Gen Z readers, this was a pithy remark on how lackluster the performance had been to that point.

A minute later, the hosts finally had a good chance, as Deki sent a cross along the endline for Jordan. Although J-Mo didn't get a shot off without Breza batting it away, it marked the first time that the Sounders truly outfoxed their opponents in the run of play on the pitch.

But things weren't rosy for the Rave Green as they still gift-wrapped opportunities for their opponents. Nouhou and Sailor both got turned and burned in the 56th minute on a medium-speed break (originating with a bad Albert pass) and Sánchez gave Fabian Herbers a point-blank chance to double Montreal's lead. It was 0.64 expected goals, a hair under the xG given by a penalty, but Herbers shanked it wide left.

Is that why the Romans grew tired of the Fabian Strategy? We may never know. But it gave the Sounders another (VERY unearned) lease on life this game.

Morris, who was one of the few Sounders players with a proactive step in his game, took a long ball in the box from Albert in the 62nd minute to mark another chance for the Sounders. He had an excellent chance to knock the ball in the net that Breza managed to bat away. The ball ricocheted out for Deki, but he didn't get enough on the ball to prevent a block from keeping the ball out of the net.

There was a glimpse of a Legacy Performance™ from Seba Gomez. At the very least, the second-half sub showed one moment of incredible quality. Jesús Ferreira, in since the 64th for Albert, forced a ball loose high up the pitch in the 66th. He then either passed it leftward for Seba or pressured Montreal midfielder Victor Loturi into doing so - either way, Gomez whacked a right-foot curler to the far corner to knot the game back up.

Morris again had an awesome chance in the 70th as he charged in from the right hand side and fired one towards the far post - well outside Breza's reach - but it dinged off that post and out towards the center of the box. No Sounders were in range to knock in any follow-up ball, and though the pyrotechnics team rather prematurely lit off the flamethrowers, the game was still knotted at one apiece.

Seba got a brace denied on a 72nd minute curler, perhaps Breza's best moment as the score again remained tied, and while another Jordan run would have given Seba a chance to put Seattle up in the 79th, he didn't put himself in the right position to knock in a shot from the center.

The way the game was going, it was hardly a surprise how badly the visitors' 89th minute chance (see the head of this article for a description) went in the end. No one, it seemed, was going to be able to win this game.

Kalani nearly put Seattle up in the first minute of stoppage with a low bouncer towards the left post, but it rolled a bit wide and, with all of the craziness of the previous five minutes in tow, the score had not changed.

Cristian got fouled in front of the box as the 92nd dawned, and once the free kick bounced off a defender out of play, the Sounders had a corner. The first ball went in and was denied by an all-out jump and dive. The second ball in was the same. The third ball came in and there was a collision that sent Cristian to the floor; the fans chanted for a penalty, but none came and the final whistle blew to more jeering from the Lumen faithful.

Ryan Sailor was not "it" on Saturday.

We often talk about players who play the game at a quicker pace than the other 21 guys on the field, but for one of the center backs on Saturday, it was the opposite.

Sure, the whole team was notably slow, whether it came to enacting their will, reacting to Montreal, or moving around, but Sailor especially had issues in these areas. The center back injury crunch has forced Seattle to experiment a little at the position, and with a fair amount of hindsight going into the game, Schmetzer decided against playing Tino Lopez and against moving Alex out of his natural position.

Had the visitors avoided banging the post or shanking open chances, Sailor's issues would have led to an out-and-out loss for the Sounders. And the pace issues nipped at him in contact, too: Montreal's guys could weave past him relatively easily in the back line, neutering his ability to hold up fast breaks and leaving the rest of the defenders in bad positions during these plays.

It only bit Seattle once, somehow. Montreal is a bad, bad team.

As it turned out, the defense looked a lot better once Snyder Brunell entered the game for Sailor in the 64th and Cristian moved back a line to fill Sailor's spot.

Where is the aggression? Where is the fight?

There are no "gimme" games in MLS, but CF Montréal was about the closest thing to it. Over 29 games, the team had racked up a measly 24 points with a 2-11-1 record on the road. Yes, that is half a point per road game coming into Saturday.

Had Seattle gone out of the gate swinging, it probably would have been an unremarkable but badly needed three points. The Sounders would have moved a point behind sixth-place LAFC and three points behind the fourth-place Earthquakes.

But they got frightened under pressure. There's no other way to put it; they saw hard-pressing, physical opponents and defaulted to backwards passes. When they tried to move the ball forward or often even laterally, their reads on teammates ahead of them and of the space they had to play with were - again - a few seconds out of date.

Schmetzer said after his team's uneasy win against SKC that the Sounders were "a little too preoccupied with trying to play out of the back", something that could also be applied to how the team played on Saturday against Montreal. Seemingly every time they got interrupted in the midfield or lost another second ball in the first half, the team would try to advance forward the same way the next time around and meet the same results.

And as Cristian said, the Sounders must be more proactive in physical contact. But the question is how: how do they get themselves to come out of the gate with that extra fire in their step? How do they have a full 90-minute performance?

"Our lack of some of the basic soccer fundamentals"

It's not a good sign for a team that so much of the discussion 30 games into the season is about being unable to do the little things. But when the Sounders were playing like they did in the first half, what else is there to talk about?

Winning first balls. Winning second balls. Knowing when to initiate a build-out and when to play in from behind. Being proactive rather than reactive. Controlling the ball with both feet. Getting an effective first touch. I could continue, but at some point I need a finite verb and I think you already get the picture.

The difficulties in the face of Montreal's press were most readily apparent, and so I asked Schmetzer about it postgame, but he quickly went into a broader point about those very fundamentals.

Of course, all of this induces the question why. Why have the Sounders gone in circles about these basic things, especially against teams like Montreal? Are they falling to trap game dynamics and playing down to competition? Are they tired? Are the selections suboptimal? Is it all of the above?

The Sounders must get some points where they can in order to ensure playoff opportunities.

The last two games have all but tossed away Seattle's slim chances at a top-four finish and a home playoff seeding.

But getting into a higher place in the dance will be quite meaningful, especially in a three-game first round where Seattle can't realistically expect to any-given-Saturday themselves into beating a team like the Whitecaps or St. Louis CITY.

The Sounders have one more game against a non-playoff opponent, a Saturday fixture against San Diego (8-12-10). After that, it's home against Houston (13-9-8), away against the first place Whitecaps (16-7-7), and home against LAFC (12-9-10).

While getting leapfrogged by RSL and missing even the play-in game is rather unlikely, Seattle would at least like to have a guaranteed series and finish in seventh or above. For that purpose, they need to outpace LA Galaxy and Colorado Rapids, who are both pacing 44 points. One win gets them above that mark, but someone is bound to go on a run - and it might not be the Sounders.

"Look, we're treating every game like a playoff game, and, we come out flat in the playoffs, our season's over," Cristian said. "Right, it's the regular season, but we're still fighting. We're not in the playoffs yet."