No pity in the Rose City for the Seattle Sounders, who fall 2-1 to the Portland Timbers in the final six-pointer of August

For the 116th time in history, the Seattle Sounders faced their fiercest rivals the Portland Timbers on Friday night at Providence Park in the latest installment of what is widely regarded as one of the biggest soccer rivalries, not just in MLS, but in all of North America. And for the second time this season, the boys in rave green fell to their nemesis, this time by a scoreline of 2-1. History was made in a plethora of fashions last night, but not in favor of the reigning CONCACAF Champions League winners. The result marked the first time since 1981 that the Sounders have failed to earn at least one regular season win over the Timbers in a given year. The defeat also marked Seattle’s 14th loss in the current regular season campaign, tying the record that was set by the club in 2016 when they finished the season with 14 losses. The 2-1 victory for the Portland Timbers also awarded the club and their fanbase the Cascadia Cup, a trophy that has stayed in the grasp of the Seattle Sounders since 2018 after successful defenses in 2019 and 2021.

Friday night’s contest couldn’t have started on a better foot for the visitors, when a corner kick taken short by Nicolás Lodeiro found the feet of Alex Roldan before a cross was looped into the box where Yeimar Gómez Andrade was ready and met the ball with his head to put the Sounders up 1-0 in the 8th minute. Lack of success on set pieces has been a point that Brian Schmetzer has constantly reiterated in recent weeks, so this goal-scoring sequence was surely something that Seattle’s head coach was going to be pleased with. “It was a very good first goal,” said Schmetzer. “It’s something we worked on at training. We hadn’t scored a lot of goals off set pieces so I was very pleased about that start.”

However, the tide would turn and the hosts pressed their foot on the gas for the majority of the first half, applying sustained pressure higher up the field, making it difficult for the Sounders to maintain any spell of possession or get the ball out of their own defensive half before turning it back over to the Timbers. After some promising looks off set pieces, Portland got their break in the final five minutes of the opening half when Eryk Williamson was deemed to have been taken down by Yeimar Gómez Andrade in the box, giving the hosts a penalty kick in front of the Timbers Army. Despite the fact that there was some contention as to whether or not it was truly a foul or not, including Taylor Twellman chiming in and tweeting that it was a “soft penalty,” VAR was not formally utilized and Dairon Asprilla cashed in on the strike from the spot to level the game at one goal apiece. 

Although officiating has been a hot topic in several of Seattle’s games this season, including the penalty kick that was awarded to the LA Galaxy after VAR determined that there was clear and obvious evidence to overturn the no-call into a golden opportunity for the hosts one week ago, Brian Schmetzer did not lose sight of the big picture of the first half. “If you remove the penalty (for Portland), which we all know it wasn’t a penalty, that’s one portion of the game,” said Schmetzer. The head coach for the Sounders went on to describe what he took away from the opening 45 minutes of play. “When you play from the lead, you should be able to establish your tempo, your rhythm to the game,” said Schmetzer. “It just seemed like we weren’t able to control possession at 1-0, and if you don’t control the possession, you don’t control tempo.”

The Timbers completely turned the game on its head in the 51st minute, when Eryk Williamson whipped in a dangerous ball off a free kick into the box where Dairon Asprilla laid the ball off into the path of a wide-open Sebastian Blanco for a point-blank effort, effectively putting the hosts up 2-1. At this point in the derby, it looked like the spirit of some of the Sounders players was truly broken. Seattle continued to give balls away to Portland in dangerous positions and seemed to have trouble connecting even simple passes together for much of the second half. Even with the introduction of Fredy Montero in the 58th minute, who is notorious for scoring goals in bunches against the Timbers both as a Seattle Sounder and Vancouver Whitecap, the visitors struggled to put any legitimately threatening goal-scoring chances together. The Sounders had their last gasp moment in the 88th minute when the boys in rave green ran the same corner kick play that gifted them their first goal in the early stages of the match, but Jackson Ragen’s header snapped off the crossbar away from the goal, effectively ending the night as another loss for Seattle in what has been a woeful summer for the club.

It’s no secret that time is of the essence and it’s certainly not on the side of the Sounders. Seattle has only seven matches left to be played this year, and they are currently sitting below the playoff line in 10th place in the western conference standings, a conference that will likely be a fight to the very end on Decision Day for the final playoff spots. Despite another disappointing outing, captain Nicolás Lodeiro did not mince any words in the post-match press conference Friday night. “We believe in our team. We have many points to win. Of course I trust in my teammates. We have a great team, we have many games, we know the situation is difficult, it’s complicated, but we have to never give up,” said Lodeiro.

While Brian Schmetzer surely must like the confidence in his captain and experienced crop of players, he made it very clear after the game in Portland that actions must speak louder than words from all involved within the team. “Words are one thing and actions are another,” said Schmetzer. “So what we all have to do as a group, starting with me as the head coach, is to make sure that our training sessions are well thought out and that we have good training sessions for the rest of the year. Then the players, of course they believe, but the words are not good enough anymore. Their actions, their body language on the field when they go into those duels or they have a chance or a half-chance that they can maybe make it a full chance. So we all have to do more instead of just talking about doing more.”

The time for talking likely should have ended weeks ago, and the time for doing more needs to certainly happen now before it’s too late. For the first time since October of 2018, excluding the MLS is Back Tournament in 2020, the Sounders will make the long cross-country trip to Florida to face Orlando City, a club that is also fighting for a playoff spot in their own conference. Despite everything that has been made of Seattle’s poor run of form in regular season play for the majority of the season, they are still in the hunt and Brian Schmetzer still has the confidence in his squad that Nicolás Lodeiro also expressed after the game. “I think the mentality of the group is still there, we will fight to the very bitter end,” said Schmetzer. “The real test will be Orlando, traveling across the country, playing an opponent we don’t know very well. We’ll have to regroup for that one for sure.”