The Sky Isn't Falling Until the Fat Lady Sings
The Sounders season is over. Like so many before them, the MLS Cup Champs flame out in spectacular fashion the season after lifting the cup. Such is the parity of MLS. Pack up your kits, hang up your scarves, cry bitter, salty, postseason-missing tears until next March.
By Monday afternoon, this is what you’ll be reading from any sports column that isn’t explicitly pro-Sounders. Trixie. Do not listen to them. To take a page from Men in Blazers, we are 2/34th or 1/17th through the MLS regular season. And while 1 point out of 6 on the road isn’t anything to write home about. It’s not unreasonable yet. Even the best MLS teams only pull about somewhere between 1.25 and 1.5 points per game. We’re slightly below that but the bigger point is the sample size is small. VERY SMALL. I’m sure your folks have taught you, one swallow does not a summer make. Neither does two.
The second half of our first game looks markedly better than the first half our first game. The first half of our second game seemed negligibly better than the second half of our first game. And the second half of the second game looked much better than the first half of our second game. Do you see the pattern happening here? Link up play is improving. Our midfield is looking better and connecting more passes. (Looking over the numbers they look similar to the Houston game overall, but it’s important to remember there was almost no production in the first half of that game. I believe Jon Ryan said, “Stats are great when they work in your favor.” I think what he meant was numbers are important and valuable, but they don’t tell the whole story of the game and may, in fact, be skewed by strategy.)
But here’s the real takeaway, that most Seattle fans know to be true. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over, Trix. Always, always, always remember that. SKC knows this better than anyone. This game was DOA until Lodeiro sunk his PK in the 83′ and we were going home with no points until Bruin snuck in his first goal for the Sounders at 93′, about a minute and a half before the ref blew the final whistle. And, let’s not kid ourselves, the goal that tied it was a messy one.
https://streamable.com/64o0m
But guess what? The messy ones count just as much as the clean ones, as much as the beautiful ones, as much as ugly ones, as much as any other goal*.
So, two done and dusted. One point stolen on the road. Next up: home opener. Prep your gear for next Sunday afternoon.
*This has one lousy exception but we’ll talk about that in postseason.
