Mauro Diaz barreled toward goalkeeper Stefan Frei flanked by three FC Dallas teammates, two on his right and one to his left. FC Dallas had finally broken Sounders FC’s possessional shackles, and Diaz looked up to see an advantage. Four attackers against three Seattle defenders caught outside the ramparts of the castle walls.
Frei locked into the play and saw a red, blinking warning light. Diaz’s stabbing run toward the top of the box sucked in the central Zach Scott, which opened a cavernous crack inside the box. Diaz went to his left, to Blas Perez, who one-touched a soft pass into that space for Kyle Bekker, who’d been flanking Diaz’s right. Bekker was in, one-on-one, about seven yards off Frei’s line.
What Bekker didn’t count on was meeting the unbending Frei, who’s in the form of his life.
Frei only had about a quarter of a second to react when the ball launched off Bekker’s foot, down and to his right. Frei still managed to splay out completely and dig it out of the turf for a save that kept FC Dallas off the scorer’s sheet. It stayed that way throughout, Sounders FC capturing a huge 3-0 win at home to push their edge at the top of the Western Conference. A few days later, the save won the MLS Save of the Week award.
For Frei, the end goal was more significant than the save itself. The match marked his eighth shutout of the season, which pulled him within one of his total from all of last year with the benefit of half as many games. That was also his sixth shutout in eight home games, proving conclusively that there’s no place quite like CenturyLink Field as far as home-turf advantage is concerned.
But Frei, with his typically egalitarian style, is loathe to point the finger at himself as to why the defense has been the league’s best this year. It’s the possession style, he says, or the cohesion between Brad Evans and Chad Marshall, or the stoic work of the rotating backups, or perhaps the rapid integration of newcomer rightback Tyrone Mears.
But there’s no questioning Frei’s organizational skills, acrobatic style and vast improvement on aerial challenges that has been a foundational bedrock for this back line. Even if Frei demurs to the four men in front of him more often than not.
“I think we’ve been solid defensively just in terms of our decision-making with risk-reward,” Frei said. “When we have the ball, we’re pretty smart with it, the way we want to build out of the back. It helps defensively because we don’t turn over the ball in stupid situations, which leads to easy chances for the opponent. We’ve forced opponents to really try and come up with something creative to get behind us.”
Perhaps the only time where that wasn’t the case this season was against the San Jose Earthquakes on March 14. The team had multiple defensive breakdowns against an Earthquakes team that waltzed into Seattle and handed Sounders FC a tough-to-swallow 3-2 defeat. Seattle’s surrendered three goals in a regular season match just twice this season, and just once at home. Against an Earthquakes team currently below the red line in terms of playoff positioning, just about everything that could’ve broken down with the defense did.
The opponent this weekend may be the same, but times have changed. Or so the numbers say, anyway.
When the Earthquakes visit CenturyLink Field this weekend, they’ll be towing in a goal-scoring cannon and not much else. Through San Jose’s first 14 matches, Chris Wondolowski has eight of the team’s 14 goals. That’s 57 percent of a single team’s entire scoring output, the highest percentage of any team in the league for any one player. In fact, nobody else on the entire roster has more than a single goal. As Steven Lenhart and Innocent Emeghara battle injures, San Jose’s had to position its attack entirely around Wondolowksi. And pray.
Lately, it hasn’t been going all that well. After scoring six goals in the month of March, the Earthquakes have just eight in their last 10 league matches. It’s a heavy attacking load Wondolowski’s been asked to pull without much help.
This means the Wondolowski Frei is tasked with tracking on Saturday has been as unpredictable as ever. Take a look at this average positioning map from San Jose’s most recent match against FC Dallas on June 7. Pay special attention to the number eight ringed in blue (attacking toward the lower goal). That’s Wondolowski.
Wondolowski continually dropped so deep to spur service that he was actually level with attacking midfielder Matias Garcia more often than not. This left the untested Mark Sherrod (12) alone up top while Cordell Cato (7) and Shea Salinas (6) probed into empty space. Ostensibly, it means San Jose is almost entirely reliant on Wondolowski scoring on restarts, since the striker isn’t physically available up top during the team’s rare possession-forward builds. The Earthquakes have just seven goals this season in the run of play. That’s the worst total in the league.
For Frei, this presents a unique challenge. How to gameplan for a player whose massive production load defies all logic?
“We know our focus is going to have to be making sure we know where he’s at at all times,” Frei said. “And he still finds the back of the net. He’s one of those guys who just knows where to be and takes care of those chances. We have to try and force him to maybe get the ball deeper.”
The good news for Sounders FC is that it likely won’t have to push too hard to force Wondolowski to retreat deep into the midfield.
Frei’s offseason was unique, at least for him. In his first five years in the league, all with Toronto FC, he’d never made the playoffs. In his first season with Sounders FC last season, he racked up more than 3,000 minutes, played 34 games and was starting deep into November. So after a period of recuperation, Frei zeroed in on improving his aerial game by beefing up his leg strength.
His added assuredness on crosses and long balls that hang up in the box is obvious to just about everyone on the team. When mixed with his collected demeanor at the back, there arguably hasn’t been a better goalkeeper in MLS so far this season.
“When you’re not getting games, the hardest thing is dealing with crosses, corner kicks, with basically aerial duals in the box,” Sounders FC coach Sigi Schmid said. “That’s something you can try and replicate in practice, but it’s never quite the same as it is in games. That’s probably the biggest advancement, just his judgment of aerial balls and his ability to control the box. Then it just becomes the game-time reactions of reading shots and your positioning and your anticipation. That’s something at practice, you can get close to that, but it’s not quite the same. He’s improved in that area.”
