Major League Soccer is routinely overloaded with episodes of feverish bloodletting. The league’s most talented teams are not immune from losses on any given weekend, and even the most robustly talented teams are not sheathed from upsets that verge on the routine.
Even still, there’s never been anything quite like last weekend. And suddenly Vancouver Whitecaps FC and the Sounders, two of the last four teams left standing in conference last year, are at the bottom of the Western Conference.
Saturday began when Montreal blasted the New York Red Bulls 3-0 without Didier Drogba. Then came a run of six utterly remarkable results, and in the first five of those instances, a non-playoff team from 2015 beat a side that made the postseason. That included both 2015 MLS Cup finalists in Portland and Columbus, losses by all three Cascadia teams and a positively stunning 5-0 win from Houston over Texas rivals FC Dallas.
In fact, all four MLS Cup semifinalists lost within a day of one another to four teams that finished the 2015 season under .500.
The minute you think you have this league pegged, you blink. And something else happens.
For our purposes this week, two of those results are particularly germane. The Sounders host Vancouver on Saturday in the first of its six-match blizzard of Cascadia Cup games this season (7 p.m. PT; Q13 FOX/Univision-Seattle/KIRO 97.3 FM/El Rey 1360 AM), and both teams are licking wounds from an abrasive start to the year.
Despite both finishing in the top four of a Western Conference they both led at one point in 2015, the Sounders and Whitecaps are both off to 0-2-0 starts to the season. From that angle, Saturday’s showdown represents an important early season hinge point. Or at least as important as any game in March can be. And that’s certainly up for debate.
The true weight of wins and losses at this point in the season is relatively light. Last season, Seattle was the best team in MLS through May and had dropped below the playoff line by August. So the fact that Seattle and Vancouver are a combined 0-4-0 through the first two weekends of the year might not mean a ton.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t at least some tangible implications here, and there may actually be more pressure squared on the Whitecaps come Saturday. The ‘Caps have been a defensive sieve in their opening two matches. As good as Carl Robinson’s attack may be, there have been catastrophic meltdowns at the back in a 3-2 loss to Montreal and the 2-1 to Sporting KC.
Seattle coach Sigi Schmid, meanwhile, can hardly be nonplussed by the breadth of his team’s performance thus far. It has shown real attacking competence and defensive verve. And while the front three has yet to bounce off the mat with a goal from the run of play, there have been chances, and at the very least all three of its surrendered goals arguably came as the result of individual errors. Not worrisome systemic issues.
Both teams have things to prove. Seattle must produce goals from its front three, and Schmid has something of a task in front of him in terms of finding a proper home for Clint Dempsey. Don’t be at all surprised to see him tried as the center prong up top if his deployment on the left continues to produce sporadic chance creation.
Schmid also has a budding injury crisis on his hands. He’s already down two opening day starters just two games into the season, and Nelson Valdez is a question mark after suffering a leg injury against Real Salt Lake.
But Vancouver has issues of a philosophical bent. Is that high-flying style finally taking a toll on its back line? Will it continue buckling if they don’t peel back more defenders? And how will that look on the road this weekend as Seattle returns to the friendly confines of CenturyLink Field?
It’s early. Most questions won’t have resolutions for months, let alone these. But keep in mind both teams still have a ton to prove - both to themselves and to the outside world - when they butt heads on Saturday.
