SEATTLE – The Seattle Sounders’ 0-0 draw against Sporting Kansas City on Saturday night at CenturyLink Field wasn’t the worst result by any stretch, considering their record still stands at a solid 6-3-2 on the season, leaving them tied with the Vancouver Whitecaps for second place in the tough Western Conference.
Even so, the mood in the home locker room after the game was hardly jovial, the prevailing sentiment being that the one point could have easily been three with just a little more luck and execution.
“It was just kind of one of those nights,” forward Chad Barrett told reporters after the game. “There’s not too many times where we’re going to get held to zero, but you can’t score every single game.”
Sporting Kansas City, playing without star forward Dom Dwyer who was a late scratch with a nagging neck injury, were content to concede much of the possession to Seattle.
Unfortunately for the Sounders, they could never turn that possession into consistent scoring opportunities.
“We’re disappointed with the tie at home,” said Sounders head coach Sigi Schmid. “We always want to win when we’re at home. I thought we had more possession, they played certainly deeper right from the beginning of the game. … In a game like this you’re not going to get 10 or 15 chances. You’re only going to get one or two and you need to finish them when you can. That didn’t fall for us today.”
Barrett, starting again this week for the injured Obafemi Martins, said the Sounders saw the style that they expected from the shorthanded SKC squad, but just couldn’t find the magic that would have led to a go-ahead goal.
“They really only had one choice and that was to sit in because we had pretty much a full team on a full week’s rest,” Barrett said. “They pretty much did exactly what they came in here for. I had some chances I wish I could have back, but ultimately we didn’t get as many chances as we wanted to because they were getting 10 or 11 guys behind the ball every single time.”
On the bright side, the Sounders were also solid defensively, managing their sixth clean sheet of the season. If there was a hero of the night for Seattle, it was goalkeeper Stefan Frei, who had a leaping save on SKC’s Benny Feilhaber in the 92nd-minute to preserve the 0-0 scoreline.
“It’s the hardest thing,” Schmid said of Frei’s save. “It’s very easy to be a goalkeeper when a team’s peppering you with shots and you’re diving right, you’re diving left, your focus is there. But when you’re sitting in goal and you’re not really facing much of anything and now all of the sudden you’re called upon to make a big save, I think that’s what separates very, very good goalkeepers from the rest of the pack.”
Ari Liljenwall covers the Seattle Sounders for MLSsoccer.com.
