The cushion, however much of one there was in the first place, is officially gone. The Seattle Sounders need wins. And fast.
Seattle’s results in its last two games were unusually pressing in terms of table positioning in the Western Conference. In each instance - away matches against Portland and then San Jose - the Sounders’ opposition sat either one or two points above them in the standings right on the edge of playoff positioning. And the Sounders walked away with just one point from both games.
Normally, that wouldn’t be so apocalyptic. MLS is the most difficult road league on the planet, after all. But the Sounders aren’t in normal territory. They’re still trying to compensate for a frightfully slow summer that left them nine points out of the postseason by the end of July. They needed to make up points, and a win from either San Jose or Portland would’ve gone a long way toward putting them in good position to at least snatch up the sixth and final playoff spot.
Instead, the trek up the table only got harder.
A quick glance at the Western Conference table and then over to the quickly shrinking remaining schedule lays out the urgency of the moment. The Sounders have seven games left, starting with a Cascadia Cup matchup against the Vancouver Whitecaps on Saturday at home (1 p.m. PT; JOEtv/Univision-Seattle/Root Sports outside Seattle/KIRO 97.3 FM/El Rey 1360AM).
After that, the Sounders have an even split between three road and home games, and the road games are a gauntlet: at LA Galaxy, Vancouver and FC Dallas.
That puts added pressure on Seattle, six points out of the playoffs with two games in hand on sixth-place Portland, to collect maximum points at home. First against Vancouver, then against Chicago (Sept. 28) and Real Salt Lake (Oct. 23). The Sounders need wins. They can’t afford to drop more points.
The troubling news for this weekend is that Vancouver is as much in the playoff hunt as Seattle, making this a third straight weekend the Sounders spar with a team fighting to make the postseason in equal measure. The Whitecaps sit in seventh, two spots above Seattle with a two-point edge with two more games played. Saturday could go a long way in shaking up the race.
To do that, the Sounders need to find an attacking spark missing since Clint Dempsey went out of the lineup. Dempsey was held out of an Aug. 24 away meeting against Houston to save his legs, and he’s missed the last two with an irregular heartbeat while the team is “cautiously optimistic” he will return from this year. He started running again this week, but he won’t play Saturday.
In the meantime, Seattle’s been treading water. Against Houston and San Jose, the Sounders needed late, manna-from-heaven equalizers from Nicolas Lodeiro to salvage otherwise forgettable performances. Those were sandwiched around a Portland derby match in which the team went down 4-0 at half to mark maybe the worst 45 minutes in the franchise’s MLS history.
Considering the stakes, the team doesn’t have much of a choice. It needs a significantly better start to the match against Vancouver to hope to snag the much-needed three points. Considering this one is at home, finally, chances are significantly better.
The Whitecaps are a confusing case study in how quickly life can turn in MLS. From July 16-Sept. 10, the Whitecaps were mired in a miserable slump. In that span they failed to grab a win in eight consecutive games, and within that run was a stretch of four consecutive losses in which the once high-flying Whitecaps only managed to score a single goal. This was certainly not the rip-roaring Vancouver side forward-thinking coach Carl Robinson introduced to the league with such gusto in 2015.
And yet a 3-1 win over Columbus Crew SC on Sept. 10 switched the paradigm. Suddenly the Whitecaps are only four points out of the postseason picture despite not having won a single game in seven weeks. So yes, the Sounders have something to worry about.
The Whitecaps team the Sounders see will be in speculative doubt until the lineups are released. Captain and attacking talisman Pedro Morales sat on the bench and didn’t play due to a coach’s decision against Columbus, and the team won anyway. If that happens again, the Sounders will have to shift their focus to the wide positions, where Vancouver is most dangerous. Cristian Techera and Christian Bolaños are both tricky threats, which will put a significant amount of stress on the Sounders’ fullbacks.
And that brings us to the most pressing question for the Sounders on Saturday; what does the back line look like?
The Sounders have still yet to pitch a shutout under interim coach Brian Schmetzer, and while his deployment options are relatively limited on the attacking end in terms of who he has available, he’s suddenly flush with defenders. Though it’s unclear if Brad Evans will play on Saturday – he tweaked his back leading up to last weekend’s game in San Jose - center back Roman Torres is healthy again and back to his old form. If Evans sits there’s no debate about Tyrone Mears at right back, despite two straight tough outings. And while Joevin Jones has some potential at left mid, he still looks like a lock on the back line this weekend.
The Sounders, of course, cannot be mathematically eliminated from the playoffs with a loss on Saturday. Those days aren’t yet upon us. But a loss - any loss - at this point does serious damage to their hopes, a loss at home in any of the team’s remaining four games puts one foot in the offseason. To avoid the other, they’ll need to win.
