Coming into Sunday evening’s MLS Heineken Rivalry Week road clash with the Portland Timbers, the Seattle Sounders knew they had their work cut out for them playing in front of a deafening Providence Park crowd without all three of their Designated Players.
But even so, Seattle head coach Sigi Schmid said missing players are simply not a valid explanation for some of the head-scratching mental lapses that occurred in a lopsided second half that saw the Sounders implode and concede three goals, sealing a deflating 4-1 defeat at the hands of their Cascadia Cup rivals.
“We just made silly errors at the end,” Schmid told reporters after the game. “We just weren’t alert enough. So they deserved to win.”
There were a healthy collection of those silly errors on Seattle’s part to choose from, but the ones sure to give Schmid the biggest headache occurred in a bizarre sequence midway through the second half, when the Sounders gave away two goals in the span of two minutes to Portland forward Fanendo Adi.
The goals turned what had been a 1-1 halftime deadlock into a second-half blowout, capped off by a stoppage-time insurance tally from substitute Rodney Wallace.
“I’m extremely disappointed in our reaction [on Adi’s goals],” Schmid said. “When we took [Adi’s first] goal, we sort of put our heads down. That’s the thing I’m really upset about with my team. To me, the scoreline was a little bit deceiving. But it’s our fault. In this particular case, we didn’t have the character and we allowed ourselves to get deflated at 2-1.”
The Sounders once again were forced to lean on some youthful faces in the absence of forwards Clint Dempsey (suspension), Obafemi Martins and All-Star midfielder Osvaldo Alonso (both to injury) – arguably the team’s three best players. But Schmid says there was plenty of veteran leadership on the field that should have allowed his side to avoid Sunday’s blowout result.
“There was still enough veteran players out there,” Schmid said. “They’ve played a lot of games and they’ve had a couple of guys who they’ve been able to rest and rotate around for sure. But we needed to do better today.”
The Sounders seemed to be in position to make the game a competitive affair after forward Lamar Neagle’s first-half equalizer off a pinpoint free kick from Tyrone Mears, making the second-half meltdown all the more perplexing for the Sounders (9-7-2) as they gear up for next Friday’s return home against DC United.
“Right now, we have to let it go,” Neagle said. “We have to learn from it. We can’t let something like this happen again where we collapse in one half. Especially when we’re in the game. We’ve got to let it go and focus on Friday, get guys rested and get guys ready for that and try to give it our all.”
