Editor's Note: The following is the second in a series of features looking back at the Seattle Sounders' season, broken down by position. Here's the first in the series, examining goalkeepers. Look for more in the series this week on SoundersFC.com.
The U.S. is fond of the cliche that defense wins championships. That very idea has helped the SEC gain an iron foothold on college football, given the NFL a backbone for the majority of its Super Bowl champs, infiltrated the NBA and saturated the NHL.
The cliche itself is not quite so common in global soccer nations, but the idea is soundly credited for championship teams in countries high and low across the globe. More commonly referred to as building good teams from back to front, any soccer coach worth his salt will tell you a title contender goes nowhere without sound defense.
The Seattle Sounders were a ground floor exhibit hall for this notion in 2015.
While it’s true Seattle didn’t ultimately bring home MLS Cup, the Sounders wouldn’t have been as well positioned to vie for it without their brutally efficient defense. Seattle finished the season tied for the best defense in MLS in terms of goals allowed, with just 36 in 34 games.
Considering the massive amounts of upheaval in the starting XI over the course of the season, don’t let that fact simply buzz the tower. Seattle probably would not have made the postseason - and it certainly wouldn’t have survived the summer intact enough to come out the other side - without that Maginot Line keeping attackers at bay.
In 34 regular season games and three playoff contests, Seattle was forced - by either circumstance, injury or national team absence - to throw out 11 different four-man defensive configurations with nine different defenders involved. The season began with right back Tyrone Mears, center backs Brad Evans and Chad Marshall, and left back Leo Gonzalez, and it ended with midfielder Cristian Roldan filling in at left back. So it goes.
From the season’s first game on March 8 until the end of the year, Seattle was only able to play the same back four in back-to-back games a grand total of 13 times.
That amount of upheaval does not lend itself to a defense with this kind of record. All the while, 'keeper Stefan Frei was able to compile his best-ever season as a constantly shifting defensive line did its best to keep defenders off his back with injury creating havoc on the covering defensive midfield.
Seattle’s back four in 2015 lurched from one unit to the next. Gonzalez started the season at left back before Dylan Remick supplanted him about a month into the season. That paved the way for the foursome of Mears, Evans, Marshall and Remick, which started 11 games together over the course of the season. That was more than twice as many games as any combination Sounders head coach Sigi Schmid ran out in 2015.
That formed the basis for the back line over the coming months. When Evans left for the Gold Cup in late June, Zach Scott replaced him to keep the cohesion from falling off, and that foursome ultimately played five games together, the second-highest total of the season for any group. The team’s summer swoon fell far more on the attack, which only managed to generate four goals in an 11-game span from June to August.
Meanwhile, the itinerant but deadly-efficient back line kept attacks at a manageable distance despite the shifts.
Seattle’s end-of-season 11-game unbeaten run that ended with a shootout loss to FC Dallas in the Western Conference Semifinals was all the more impressive because the defensive shifting was perhaps at its most acute late in the year.
Schmid found what he hoped was the back line that’d see him out for the rest of the year when Panamanian captain and human granite slab Román Torres joined the team in August. Excitement abounded.
From late August to Sept. 12, Mears, Torres, Marshall and rookie Oniel Fisher played four of five games together, but Torres’ season-ending ACL injury put an end to that and spun the wheel yet again. From that point until the end of the season, Schmid played two brand new defensive combinations, went back to the line that started the season for the first time in seven months on the final matchday of the regular season, and played two defensive combinations in three playoff games.
All the while, the Seattle defense stayed among the top three in MLS for the entire season. Go figure.
In reality, injuries saved Schmid from having to make some seriously difficult decisions across the back line. Torres’ addition put Evans on uncertain ground, and when Torres did play, Evans scooted upfield to center mid. But even that was only as much of an option as it was because longtime Sounders stalwart Osvaldo Alonso was injured at the time.
Had everyone been healthy, where did Evans fit into this first choice XI after the blizzard of summer transfers? Schmid proved his first choice center back duo was Marshall and Torres when all three were healthy, and Mears became so indispensable at right back - Evans’ other defensive position - that he played 400 more minutes this season than anyone else on the team in his first season in Seattle.
Evans filled in at left back once this season, but that was a last-ditch effort due to injury late in the year. Could the team captain supplant young guns Fisher and Remick on the left in 2016? It wouldn’t be out of the question considering his history adapting well to foreign positions.
Torres’ injury throws a bit of shade on how this back line will look in 2016. If Torres is ready to go full bore in March, which is not a guarantee, the Mears-Torres-Marshall-Fisher lineup is a serious possibility. If not, expect Evans to be anywhere and everywhere again next season, probably beginning at center back yet again.
And as for Scott, who’s 35 and coming off a gruelingly productive season in which he played more minutes in a season than at any point in his MLS career, retirement could be around the corner. If not, it’s hard to imagine Scott doesn’t have a place as a rotation option in the middle again.
If anything, Seattle probably needs to add some youthful depth to the back line in 2016, namely in the middle. Mears, Marshall, Torres and Evans will all be 30 or older next season, and neither Fisher or Remick are spot-duty center backs. Jimmy Ockford played one MLS match in 2015 and filled in for a couple CONCACAF Champions League games. Could he take a more prominent role in 2016? Or are there more transfer window opportunities to fill gaps for the future?
However this back line looks in 2016, it laid quite the foundation on shifting sands this year.
