The Seattle Sounders will attempt to win the first MLS Cup in club history on Saturday, when they’ll take on Toronto FC at BMO Field in the league’s title match (8 pm ET; FOX, UniMas in the US, TSN1/3/4/5, RDS in Canada).
The Sounders had a pretty wild ride to the championship game. Just how did they get here? Let’s dig in:
Morris in, Oba out during active offseason
The Sounders made plenty of news even before the season began. The club got things going in January, when they made one of the bigger signings of the offseason, beating out German club Werder Bremen to sign Jordan Morris to the largest Homegrown contract in league history.
Morris was supposed to team with Clint Dempsey, Obafemi Martins and Nelson Valdez to form perhaps the most potent attack in all of MLS – then Martins bolted for China. The Nigerian star left a huge hole in the Sounders attack, one that the club would spend the first half of the season struggling to fill.
Terrible start leads to Schmid’s exit
Despite the preseason hype, the Sounders got off to the worst start in the club’s MLS history this year. Seattle opened the season by losing their first three games, then, after a brief uptick, went 2-8-1 from May 14 through July 24 to fall to 6-12-2 in their first 20, well out of the playoff race in the West and looking like they’d miss the postseason for the first time since they joined MLS in 2009.
The last game in that stretch was a listless 3-0 loss at Sporting Kansas City, after which head coach Sigi Schmid – who had managed the team for the entirety of their time in MLS – got the axe. In his place stepped Brian Schmetzer, who was tasked with getting the Sounders back in the playoff race. Luckily for him, the Sounders had a major reinforcement on the way.
Lodeiro arrives, Seattle thrives
Days after Schmid was replaced by Schmetzer, Uruguayan national team midfielder Nicolas Lodeiro arrived in Seattle. The Designated Player, who joined the Sounders from Argentine giants Boca Juniors, immediately made a huge impact.
He was dangerous in his first game, a 1-1 draw against LA on July 31, then spent the next two months tearing the league up. Lodeiro recorded three goals and eight assists in the eight games following his debut, powering the Sounders to a 5-1-2 record in that span to vault the club back up the West standings. The 27-year-old did most of it without the assistance of Dempsey, who was sidelined in late August due to an irregular heartbeat and ruled out for the season due to the ailment in September.
Lodeiro cooled off a bit down the stretch, but the Sounders stayed red hot, posting a 3-1-1 record in their final five regular season contests to enter the playoffs as the West’s No. 4 seed, completing a remarkable turnaround that saw the club earn eight more points in their final 14 games than they did in their first 20.
Early drama, impressive wins highlight playoff run
Seattle started their MLS Cup Playoff run in dramatic fashion, getting an 88th minute goal from unlikely hero Valdez to controversially defeat Sporting Kansas City 1-0 in the Knockout Round.
Things were a little less exciting the rest of the way. The Sounders eliminated most of the drama from their Western Conference Semifinal series against Supporters’ Shield winners FC Dallas in the first leg, getting three goals – one from Valdez, two from Lodeiro – in an eight-minute span to beat FCD 3-0. They held onto their aggregate advantage in the second leg, losing the second leg 2-1 at Toyota Stadium but advancing to the Western Conference Championship by a 4-2 total margin.
They made similar work of the Colorado Rapids in the West final, topping Colorado 2-1 at CenturyLink Field in the first leg before dispatching the Rapids 1-0 in the return leg outside Denver to qualify for their first ever MLS Cup.
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