Chad Barrett wasn’t supposed to play on Sunday. He wasn’t even supposed to be on the bench.
Barrett, a veteran striker with four goals this season entering Sunday, was left off the gameday 18-man roster for Sunday’s pivotal battle against the LA Galaxy at CenturyLink Field. For Barrett, that meant watching the game from the press box with the rest of the inactives.
Sitting next to S2 goalkeeper Tyler Miller and teammate Andy Craven as the team ran through warmups, Barrett downed a Coke and was about to tuck into a plate of pasta when his phone lit up.
It was Seattle assistant coach Kurt Schmid. Nelson Valdez had been scratched from the starting lineup late due to a knock he picked up before the match. The game was starting in less than 15 minutes. Barrett was being added to the bench.
“That’s why you’ve got to show up to the stadium,” Barrett said.
The Sounders couldn’t be more glad he did.
Thanks to Barrett’s 93rd-minute tap-in off a Marco Pappa corner kick flicked on by Brad Evans, Seattle rescued a well-earned point in a 1-1 draw with the defending MLS Cup champs. The Galaxy famously knocked Seattle out of the playoffs last season in the Western Conference Championship, and a 3-1 loss in LA earlier this season added even more incentive to the teams’ final meeting of the season.
Despite a consistent spell of possession and chances that stretched over the course of nearly the entire second half, the equalizer was stubbornly obstinate in following. The Galaxy bagged the first when Robbie Keane profited from a wayward Zach Scott pass and finished past Stefan Frei in the 36th minute. Nearly the entire rest of the match from Seattle’s perspective was a frantic dash for goals.
Despite a flurry of chances, they wouldn’t fall. Until Barrett.
While he was on the bench, Barrett noticed the forwards weren’t crashing on the box. Determined to remedy that when he entered in the 85th minute as Seattle’s final sub, Barrett was inserted for Andreas Ivanschitz on the left - far from his more comfortable position up top - and nearly connected on a cross just after coming on.
But it wasn’t until extra time, when the game was less than two minutes from ending, that Barrett delivered a point-saving goal against his former team. And he did it two hours after he was about to eat dinner.
“It’s been a funny day,” Barrett said.
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Pappa’s corner flew into the box short, and Evans was able to get just enough of a knick on it to fling it behind and into the six-yard box. Barrett, dead-set on crashing the net, beat marker Gyasi Zardes with a nifty move toward goal and shimmied into wide open space. The knock-in by that point was academic. Just like that, the Sounders got a point to stay in the thick of the playoff hunt from the most unlikely of sources.
Valdez’s injury - it’s his calf, which Sounders head coach Sigi Schmid said the team will have checked on Monday - forced a chain reaction in the 18. Lamar Neagle was bumped from the bench to the right flank, and Barrett took Neagle’s place on the bench.
“The change was to put Neagle into the lineup, and then to bring Barrett away from his hot dog and sodas and bring him down to the locker room,” Schmid said. “It’s a good thing we did. He ended up getting a good goal.”
The feeling this time was markedly different after Seattle drew Sporting Kansas City away last weekend. That time, Seattle lost a lead in the final 10 minutes to a makeshift SKC team playing without its eight top earners. The game felt like two dropped points.
The locker room was a bit more upbeat on Sunday. The Galaxy brought their unquestioned first team, with Keane and Giovani Dos Santos up top buttressed by Juninho and Steven Gerrard in the middle. The wide inclusions of Zardes and Sebastian Lletget made this arguably the most stacked XI in Galaxy history. And for more than 45 minutes the Sounders rocked them onto their heels and looked every bit the aggressor.
After registering one shot at the half despite owning 54 percent possession, Schmid stressed three points in the locker room: A quicker pace, a higher volume of balls into Clint Dempsey and Obafemi Martins up top and more opportunities to stretch LA’s defense. They made good on all three.
“Today, we gathered a point back,” Schmid said. “We wanted three because we’re at home. And I think we deserved three based upon the overall game, but especially the way we performed in the second half.”
Seattle owned a whopping 72.2 percent possession in the second half and didn’t allow the Galaxy a single shot on target after the half. Meanwhile, Seattle bumped its on-target shots total from one in the first half to five over the final 45 minutes. That, of course, included the final critical shot from Barrett, which caused so much noise from the home fans that the press box Barrett no longer occupied shook from the eruption.
The draw kept the Sounders three points ahead of the sixth-place San Jose Earthquakes with two games left for both teams. That makes Seattle a master of its own destiny still, which is a critical luxury in a Western Conference race that still has seven teams within seven points of one another with so few games left.
As for Barrett, he might enjoy this one for a day or two.
“When you’re a kid, you’re the star of your team. When you get to this level, you’re the star of nothing,” Barrett said. “You’ve got guys like Clint Dempsey and Oba who are just a step above. (And) Gerrard and Keane, just a step above everybody else. It’s just soccer IQ. When you get your moments, you’ve got to step up. I love the spotlight. I’m 30 now and it might not last too much longer, so I’m going to soak it up.”
