The rain began just as the players filtered onto the CenturyLink Field turf for the opening kickoff. Sunday was MLS’s grand Decision Day, a moniker that represented an intense, open plane of possibilities. And as the rain started, Sounders FC was a tug of fate away from going in a panoply of different directions.
Would these Sounders, pulled onto so many different paths by injury and absence this season, be in the playoffs or sitting at home?
The Sounders wasted very little time deciding that fate for themselves. After five minutes, Seattle had a foot in the playoffs. After 10, they’d wrenched the decision away from the other five matches being played at the same time and dropped in both feet, pulling the fans with them in the midst of a raucous environment involving more than 55,000 full-throated supporters Sunday.
The Sounders are going to the playoffs, and they’re doing it in style.
Seattle scored two goals in the opening 10 minutes of a game for the first time in history, setting the tone for a 3-1 win over Real Salt Lake that pushed the Sounders into the postseason for a seventh consecutive year. Seattle hadn’t missed the playoffs once since entering MLS in 2009, and they didn’t start on Sunday. In fact, the Sounders haven’t lost since August and are 4-0-3 in their last seven league games. Not a bad way to head into a pivotal knockout match in the next round.
Thanks to Sporting Kansas City’s 2-1 win over the LA Galaxy at the same time, Seattle will host their old playoff nemesis at home in a one-off playoff contest on Wednesday (7 p.m. PT; JoeTV/UniMas/KIRO 97.3/El Rey 1340 AM).
The Galaxy knocked Seattle out of the playoffs last year at CenturyLink Field. The headlines practically write themselves.
“(It takes) a chip on the shoulder,” forward Chad Barrett said about what it takes to score against the Galaxy. “And I guarantee we all have it.”
Sunday was a madcap dash to the finish line for the seven Western Conference teams still vying for postseason positioning. Such was the insanity that the Sounders could’ve finished anywhere from second place in the West to out of the playoffs entirely. A win guaranteed Seattle a playoff spot, and while they could’ve qualified with a loss or a draw, it would’ve been tight.
By the 10th minute, when Marco Pappa doubled a lead Clint Dempsey gave the team five minutes in, the question wasn’t so much whether the Sounders would make the playoffs, but who and where they’d play.
Twenty minutes in, the results spread had Seattle hosting the San Jose Earthquakes. Twenty minutes later, they were hosting Kansas City, and at halftime they were home to Vancouver. In the 60th minute, they were traveling to face the Galaxy at StubHub Center. Then, in the 65th minute, SKC delivered the winning strike that turned that result on its head. Luckily for Seattle, the results held.
That allowed Seattle to snag the No. 4 seed and relegated the Galaxy to No. 5. Seattle beat the Galaxy at home in the playoffs last year, but the away goals rule allowed the Galaxy to elbow past Seattle and move on to eventually win an MLS Cup.
A shot at vengeance comes next. On Sunday, it was more about appreciating the wild ride that dumped Seattle onto this most prestigious of doorsteps. The fact that Seattle added another MLS single-season average attendance record on Sunday with 44,245 only piled on to the night’s festivities.
“Obviously we’re extremely happy with the result,” said Sounders FC Head Coach Sigi Schmid. “I think we got out of the gate really well. We jumped on them early.”
Indeed they did. Historically early, in fact.
The Sounders are a flat out different team when Dempsey and Obafemi Martins are dialed in, and they’ve rarely looked as locked into the target so quickly as they did on Sunday. Just five minutes into the match, Dempsey redirected a timely cross from Martins to send the drenched crowd into hysterics, and it only took five more minutes for Pappa to double it with a left-footed blast off an assist from Dempsey.
Dempsey put the finishing touches on the rout in the 20th. He freed Martins into a pocket of space in the box, and Martins hammered a laser that RSL backup keeper Jeff Attinella parried back into the box.
Dempsey’s predatory instincts engaged immediately. The ball hopped up and Dempsey whirled his right leg up and around the ball to smash it into the upper right corner. Just like that, Seattle’s two biggest stars contributed to the team’s three biggest goals of the season.
Just like Seattle drew it up? You bet.
“Those two guys have been phenomenal, especially as a duo, together,” Schmid said. “I know those two guys, when they’re on their game, they’re going to find each other, they’re going to combine. I think our record is probably pretty good when they each get a point in the game, whether it’s goals or assists.”
The rest of the match was about lead management, and maybe a modicum of scoreboard watching too. The team basically knew it’d had a postseason spot clinched by halftime, but the team still didn’t know who was next on the docket. That took the pressing weight of simply qualifying for the postseason off the team’s back - Schmid said the early goals did his blood pressure well - and pushed everything onto curiosity.
Now, Seattle knows. They get the Galaxy team that knocked them out of the playoffs in 2010, 2012 and 2014. Can Seattle break the hex on Wednesday? With this much momentum, they certainly put themselves in a good position.
“It didn’t matter to us if it was LA or if it was Portland or Vancouver or whoever,” Schmid said. “We wanted to be at home. Now it’s LA, and so we want to take care of business on Wednesday and continue to move forward. The only way we can win MLS Cup is to beat LA.”
