The Orlando trip was always going to be difficult for the Sounders.
Cross-country travel for a Wednesday match four days after an emotional Cascadia derby against the Portland Timbers is draining. Add the fact the Sounders lost 2-1 to their archrival Friday and are leaking air in their playoff bubble and the pressure to get a positive result boarders on overwhelming.
But that’s the situation the Sounders face against the Lions at Exploria Stadium.
The Rave Green (10-14-3) are winless in their past four matches. The skid has them below the playoff line — one of six teams separated by four points or fewer between sixth and 11th place in the Western Conference. The top seven advance, the top four will host their postseason opening round match.
“We’ve just not been able to dig out of the hole,” Sounders keeper Stefan Frei said. “We have to find a way.”
After the Portland loss, Sounders coach Brian Schmetzer pointed to multiple parts of the team’s performance that could’ve changed the outcome aside from the “non-penalty” on Yeimar Gomez Andrade that allowed the Timbers to equalize in the opening half. The team couldn’t control possession in the midfield, lacked quality in front of goal and conceded another score on a basic defending mishap.
The tiny issues on both sides of the ball have led the Sounders to be blown out only once in MLS competitions, a 3-0 loss to Portland at Lumen Field in July. The run of losses — and two wins — since then have been by a single goal.
“We used to win games by one,” said Frei, who was traded to Seattle in 2013. “We’d be clinical up top, scoring the goals we needed to score, and we’d also bend and not break in the back. Unfortunately, that’s flipped a little bit. We can’t find too many high-quality chances that we have to put away and at the same time, we bend and break (defensively).
“The soft goals is what we need to correct, especially when you know you’re not finding the back of the net consistently. So far, we haven’t been able to do that at all this year, and it’s been rather frustrating.”
Wednesday’s match is Seattle’s first against Orlando City since May 2019 due to league-imposed travel restrictions amid the COVID-19 pandemic the past two seasons. The Sounders won 2-1, former midfielder Handwalla Bwana and striker Raul Ruidiaz providing the scores.
The Lions pre-COVID were a bottom-dweller club in the Eastern Conference. Orlando made its first playoff appearance in franchise history in 2020 and is currently fifth in this season’s standings despite a 6-7-0 record at home.
Like the Sounders last spring, Orlando (11-10-6) is balancing a strong tournament run with MLS matches. The side will host their first U.S. Open Cup final on Sept. 7 before a sellout crowd at Exploria Stadium.
The caliber of opponents during Seattle’s successful CONCACAF Champions League run is superior to the pro-am lineup in the Open Cup, but Orlando is on a three-game win streak in MLS games headed into Wednesday.
“It’s a tough place to play; obviously Orlando is a good team, but the environment isn’t easy,” said Sounders forward Jordan Morris, whose team dealt with inclement weather Tuesday that delayed training and thunderstorms are expected Wednesday.
Orlando defeated reigning league champion New York City FC 2-1 on Sunday with a downpour soaking the field for part of the match.
“It’s kind of an unknown opponent because there’s a wide range of factors going into the game,” said Schmetzer, who might not heavily rotate his starting lineup in order to give the Sounders the best chance to win. “But we need to fix us, I can’t worry about what Orlando is doing.”
Seattle is currently holding onto the 2016 narrative where the club lost a record 14 matches but were able to close the season with a 5-1-2 mark to advance to the playoffs and ultimately win the MLS Cup. Seattle has seven games remaining this year, including the Orlando match.
In 2016, a coaching change where Schmetzer replaced Sigi Schmid and new designated player arrival in Nico Lodeiro sparked a postseason push. The team only has themselves to lean on this time.
“It’s been so, so frustrating this year, but I know the guys will fight until the very end in every game and in the season,” Frei said. “It’s a given. We’ll do that for as long as we can. But we need to be a bit more proactive in terms of finding ourselves in positions where we create our own luck and somehow, we squeak out a result. With a little bit of luck, maybe it gives us confidence and we’re on the train (to the postseason).”