For the third straight week, the Seattle Sounders were in the midst of a scoreless deadlock in the game’s final minutes, needing just one elusive goal to get a much-needed victory and their season back on track.
And for the third straight week, Seattle conceded a late game-winner to the opposition, this time falling 1-0 to the Montreal Impact courtesy of an 87th-minute tally off the head of Montreal defender Laurent Ciman. The Sounders lost their previous two games against Chicago and Colorado under almost identical circumstances, and have now lost six of seven MLS matches overall.
Seattle haven’t scored since Tyrone Mears gave Seattle their only win of the month with a late tally against D.C. United on July 3, a drought that has left Sounders head coach Sigi Schmid and his squad scratching their heads as to how find some – any – source of production from their attacking core.
“It’s really frustrating,” Schmid said after the game. “You can’t go 270 minutes without scoring a goal. That’s just not good enough. We’re not even forcing saves for the goalkeeper during this stretch. We need to get more out of [our attack].
“That’s three games now in the last three weeks where we should have gotten three ties. But it’s tough for the defense when they know their offense isn’t going to score.”
Seattle veteran defender Zach Scott said he can’t recall a stretch in his entire Sounders career quite like the one his squad is currently mired in.
“It’s hard to put into words,” Scott said. “I’ve never been a part of a Sounders team where everything has kind of gone wrong at one time. …I don’t know what it is, if it’s matter of fatigue, team-wise, or just a lack of focus. Whatever it is, it needs to change. This is quickly turning into a season that had a lot of hope and now it’s one that’s very quickly slipping through our grasp.”
Seattle can take a certain degree of solace in the fact that its striker tandem of Clint Dempsey and Obafemi Martins is soon to return, along with captain Brad Evans. But the extent of the struggles in their absence has to be alarming for a Seattle squad that was widely considered one of the deepest rosters in MLS coming into the season.
“Some guys probably need to go to the bench, but we don’t have any alternatives right now,” Schmid said. “There’s not much we can do. We just keep going. We’ve got a game next week and hopefully we get a couple players back.”
The Sounders hope a clean slate that comes with a new month can help them turn things around, as they now have a week to prepare for a tough Cascadia Cup home matchup with the Vancouver Whitecaps on August 1.
