It began in that quiet, unassuming way so many Sounders FC attacks do these days. Stefan Frei popped up with an errant cross trapped between his arms and his chest, rushed to the edge of his area and side-armed a pass to the right wing and the waiting Tye Mears.
Over the course of the next two minutes, the Sounders slowly and meticulously bent the Columbus Crew SC midfield in half before shattering it entirely on the other end of the field.
Clint Dempsey’s first goal on Saturday in the 24th minute tied Seattle’s road match with Crew SC at 1-1, and the strike itself got most of the sunshine. It was, after all, a beautifully taken curler, arcing from outside the left post to just beyond the keeper’s grasp, shading the inside of the upright for Dempsey’s sixth tally of the season. By the end of the match, he’d get one more.
In many ways, that goal was a flourishing tree in full spring regalia, its blooms popping in vibrant, rich hues of green and blue. It’s what caught your eye, what arrests passersby and what ultimately draws them into the garden. But what they don’t necessarily see are the implements of its creation: the back-aching work spent hunched over the soil bed with trowel and gloves, the patience to wait out the branch-threatening winters, the constant attention to upkeep. Without the inelegant work of tending to the tree’s below-surface vitality, many times behind the cloak of secrecy, its blooms never exist.
Before Dempsey’s goal, Sounders FC completed 17 uninterrupted passes, wending from Frei’s arms to the back of the net some 100 yards away. The build was meticulous, back-wrenching time spent hovering over the soil. After Frei, possession went from Mears on the right to Dempsey, back to Mears and then back to Frei again. Sweeping his gaze to the left now, Frei played out to Chad Marshall, who pushed on for left back Dylan Remick and then to Osvaldo Alonso and on to Marco Pappa up the left channel. Crew SC then cut off Seattle’s advance, so Sounders FC retreated again, undeterred. From Pappa back to Alonso back to center back Brad Evans. The attack reset for a second time.
This time, though, Seattle went back to the same well. Evans pushed it back out to Alonso, the ticking heart of the midfield, who again found Pappa. But this time the Guatemalan live-wire applied the jumper cables, popping inside and cutting open space as an instigator before finding Dempsey in his typically withdrawn position. Dempsey, still moving back toward the right, found Andy Rose moving along the touch line. Rose was the ninth Sounders FC player to get a touch in the same possession sequence.
Here is where the tree’s blooms began bursting open. Rose dumps it back for Mears - the right back’s third touch in the operatic movement - who then shuttles it back inside for Pappa. Finally, Pappa dances back inside before finding Dempsey, who takes a few brief setting touches before curling in the tying goal.
The soil had been readied. By the time Dempsey set up for his final touch, it was time for the tree itself to take center stage.
The trouble with looking at these Sounders FC attacks unilaterally is that so much of them exist below the soil shelf, in the root system. As holistic moments, they don’t translate as much as pure goals do in an aesthetic, YouTube sense. Gardening, after all, is only a means to an end. What you really want is the resulting elegance. But the splendid latter doesn’t happen without the workmanlike former, and nobody in MLS this season has shown as much initiative in tilling the soil in possession as has Sounders FC.
The build-up in Columbus was the second time in as many games Seattle has conjured something of that magnitude during the construction of a goal. Notably, both were on the road. Against NYCFC the weekend before, Seattle cobbled together 18 consecutive passes, which became a mere footnote to the etherial back heel from Dempsey - the 18th pass - and the clinical finish from Obafemi Martins to finish the movement. In fact, the most prominent .gif of the build-up speeds through the 18 passes on fast forward, as if acknowledging that as individual moments, none of them except the last one stood out. The final pass earned Dempsey praise from shore to shore, and Martins was rightly feted for his lethality in front of goal.
But the careful, patient and comparatively normal moments that preceded the setup and the finish fed the soil precisely so the leafy goal could reach the dappled sunlight. Like the lush soils of The Riverlands produce the grain that feeds the more glamorous cities of Westeros, so does Seattle’s desire to build from the back feed its more prominent forwards. Alonso doesn’t show up in the goal clip once, but couldn’t have happened without him.
Against Columbus, Seattle completed 85.6 of its passes, the eighth-ranked single-match passing performance in the league this year. Further, Sounders FC is fourth in MLS in accurate short passes per game and 17th in accurate long balls by volume, which points toward the aesthetic coach Sigi Schmid and his veteran lineup have gone about building over the years.
So while the blooms and boughs garner the majority of the attention, be sure to look below the soil to Sounders FC’s vast network of roots reaching deep under the ground. There are few in MLS this season more immensely influential.
