The good, the bad, and the ugly: Notes from the Seattle Sounders Round one, Leg one win against FC Dallas October 30th, 2023
By Charles Hamaker
Seattle, WA – The positive run of form that we saw the Seattle Sounders end the regular season campaign with appears to be continuing, as a 2-0 victory over FC Dallas has them up early in their round one matchup of the MLS Cup Playoffs. There’s not much to be upset about from this match if you’re a Sounders fan or part of the club itself, outside of the two generous giveaways that Seattle nearly had to pay for in the first half had it not been for Stefan Frei’s continued strong play and a bit of luck. While the Sounders themselves said they could’ve had a few more goals, scoring multiple goals in a second consecutive game is something the club couldn’t hardly do over the course of the summer, so it’s good to see the attack trending in a positive direction.
“I think there’s a lot of positives that we can take into the next game on Saturday. It’s the momentum, how we ended the season, defending really good, clean sheets, but also creating chances and scoring goals. It’s good to kind of keep going from the regular season into the playoffs. Playoffs are all about winning, so I think we’re happy.”
The good: Another clean sheet, converting two chances
While we’ll talk about the two giveaways later on, those two mental lapses were the only issues that the defense and goalkeeper Stefan Frei had tonight. It’s a continued travesty that Frei was not at LEAST a finalist for the MLS Goalkeeper of the year award, and that was shown once again in this win as Stef made multiple saves in big moments to keep the Seattle lead intact and secure another postseason clean sheet under his belt. While it’s a blow to lose young Reed Baker-Whiting until the later rounds of the playoffs, if the Sounders get there, the backline of Nouhou, Ragen, Yeimar, Roldan has been strong for the majority of the regular season, and we can’t say enough about Stefan Frei. While the Seattle midfield plays a role defensively as well, we need to highlight the backline and goalkeeper play that the Sounders currently have going.
The two goals that Seattle scored were different obviously, considering one came from the run of play and the other did not, but both showed smart play from the Sounders in the eventual lead into them. On the penalty that Albert Rusnak took and scored in the 43rd minute, Cristian Roldan showed an awareness to get into the box and shield the ball well enough to force Dallas defender Marco Farfan to reach through him for it, fouling Roldan in the process to force the penalty. On Morris’ goal, Nico Lodeiro helped to orchestrate passing throughout the Dallas side before finding Nouhou up the Western sideline of Lumen field, Nouhou had a brilliant pass, and Morris took advantage of the open space in the box to hammer the shot home. Execution is huge in every match, but executing at the right moments in the playoffs is the difference between advancing and going home empty handed.
The bad: Failing to add more on the other chances generated
As alluded to at the start of this, scoring the two goals is plenty considering that the number of goals scored in a match for the winning side does not matter in this year's MLS Cup Playoffs format, the result of the match does. There’s no aggregate that will come into play later or tiebreakers, you can rack up the goals all you want. It’s the result that truly matters, but for the sake of looking for improvement from the Sounders going further into their playoff run and for leg two of this first round matchup, there were a few opportunities they certainly could have had. While the expected goals from FOTMOB suggest that the club would only have only had “half” a goal more than the total they actually ended up with, Seattle created great pressure against Dallas and was able to force them into some tough situations from when the match started all the way until the final whistle. While it worked against Dallas, if they make it further into the playoffs those “missed” chances could hurt you.
And the ugly: Two bad giveaways almost hurt Seattle
We’ll give some credit to FC Dallas for keeping pressure on the Sounders while Seattle was playing in their own half, but mostly the home side just needs to be better when it comes to the two bad giveaways that they gave up that likely should have resulted in at least a goal, let alone two. While the first instance was a strong save by Stefan Frei, the second one Seattle got a bit lucky as Jesus Ferreira of Dallas completely sailed his attempt up and over the goal. Give some credit to Sounders defender Nouhou for flying back to defend the chance and provide some pressure to Ferreira, potentially forcing a rushed shot, but any other club that’s better at scoring goals or better overall will likely bury one of those chances at minimum and make this a tougher match for you. It’s the playoffs, and while the Sounders backline has been strong all season long, you’ve got to be sharper with the ball in your own half and especially near your own goal.
What’s next?
Following tonight’s leg one win in their round one MLS Cup Playoffs matchup against FC Dallas, Seattle now has a few days to review the game footage and see what necessary tweaks need to be made as they’ll head to Frisco, Texas for leg two. That match is on Saturday, November 4th with a kickoff time of 6PM PST as Dallas will look to defend home field and Seattle aims to handle business for a second straight match to advance to the next round. While the Sounders had a lot of positives come out of tonight’s victory against Dallas, Seattle can certainly improve as they could’ve scored more than the two actual goals that found the back of the net. Considering the strong effort that the Sounders got from Nico Lodeiro and Raul Ruidiaz off the bench, it’ll be intriguing to see what starting eleven head coach Brian Schmetzer goes with on Saturday.
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Cover photo by Mike Fiechtner / Sounders FC Communications
