We take a look back at the season the goalkeepers had, including the recently departed Michael Gspurning.
Over the next week, we will look back at the 2013 Sounders FC season by giving a review of each position group.
The first position group we will examine is goalkeepers.
Seattle had three players man the role between the pipes in 2013, led by second-year starter Michael Gspurning with 28 starts and followed by the four starts of Marcus Hahnemann and two starts from Andrew Weber while on loan from Phoenix FC.
Beyond MLS play, Gspurning started five more matches in the MLS Cup Playoffs and CONCACAF Champions League while Hahnemann added three starts to his total.
As a whole, it was considered a strong group, though a few outlying matches made the statistics look much less appealing than the talent on the field.
“I think they both did well, but I’ll say it was probably not the best year from both of them,” said Sounders FC Sporting Director Chris Henderson.
While the team started slow as a whole, Gspurning had allowed just five goals through the first four matches before backstopping consecutive shutouts against the New England Revolution and Colorado Rapids. He would add two more shutouts in May, but a 4-0 loss to the LA Galaxy left a sour taste at the end of the month.
It also acted as a bit of a warning flag of difficult times to come away from CenturyLink Field.
At home, Gspurning and the Sounders were fairly immutable in their defensive dominance. In 14 home starts, Gspurning went 8-2-4 and allowed a 0.93 goals against average. That number is made all the more impressive when a 4-1 loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps FC late in the season is taken out of the equation, as Gspurning’s GAA was just 0.69 at CenturyLink Field outside of that match.
On the road, though, he was 4-7-2 with a 1.63 goals against average, a number escalated by the 4-0 loss to the Galaxy, a 3-1 loss to the Houston Dynamo and a 5-1 defeat against the Colorado Rapids.
Hahnemann, meanwhile, served as more than just a stop-gap for the times when Gspurning wasn’t in the starting 11. He had one shutout in his four starts, going 2-2-0 in the regular season with a 1.00 goals against average. In both of his defeats, Seattle’s offense was shutout.
This week, it was announced that Gspurning would not return and Seattle traded for former Toronto FC goalkeeper Stefan Frei, who started 81 games over three seasons from 2009-2011, but missed much of the last two seasons because of injuries.
