After a hard fought win in San Jose last Tuesday, Seattle seemed to be figuring out what ailed them in the last eight winless league matches. After giving up a 12th minute off-side goal to Saer Sene, Seattle fought back to take the lead behind two Eddie Johnson headers. Only to have it negated by an extra time goal by Diego Fagundez. Sigi Schmid lamented the early goal keeper sub that had to be used at half time, “You don’t expect to have to make a goalkeeper sub so that would have given me one more field sub,” Schmid said. “We could have brought on fresh legs. I think you saw a lot of tired people out there at the end. Andy Rose played 90 minutes on Tuesday in a very hard-fought game, when (Alex) Caskey got out, he was pretty tired as well. Mauro (Rosales) was tired. Eddie Johnson was pretty tired at the end. So if we had one more sub that could have made a difference for us, as well.”
Even though this adds to Seattle’s winless streak, much was to be gained. They still gave up the first goal of the match but they were able to fight back and take the lead. Mauro Rosales and Alvaro Fernandez turned in high-spirited performances. Eddie Johnson is starting to look like the player they expected they were getting. I get the feeling that Seattle started to believe all the hype about their team coming into this season, and now they are realizing that nothing will be given to them. This is not La Liga or the Premiership where the top 4 can be predicted accurately most seasons. This is a league built on parity. There is a new big four every season. Seattle will eventually secure their first win since May 9th but they will have to start finding ways to win games, even ugly if they have to. They may have to expound on some of the grit that they showed tonight. Seattle played tough, they were hard to beat, but only for 93 minutes.
