The waiting began the moment the final whistle blew.
The Seattle Sounders’ 2-1 loss to the Houston Dynamo on Saturday afternoon left the club’s playoff standing in limbo, pending the results of San Jose’s match with Kansas City and Colorado’s match with Real Salt Lake.
After the loss, coach Sigi Schmid was ready to shift his focus to Halloween evening, when the Sounders open the postseason at Qwest Field against a soon-to-be-determined opponent.
“As far as the game goes, I thought we had some good moments,” Schmid said. “I think the start of the game was good, and then after the second goal we played well and had some good chances. For us now, the focus is on playoffs, preparation, and getting our bodies right and getting our game plan against whomever it is we play down.”
A win would have assured the Sounders of the No. 4 seed in the West, but a pair of missed chances left Seattle a little short against the Dynamo. After James Riley opened the scoring with this second career goal, Houston battled back to score twice through Geoff Cameron and Cam Weaver.
In the end, it was enough to doom the Sounders to defeat despite only allowing three shots on goal to the home team. Luckily for the Dynamo, who closed 2010 with back-to-back wins against playoff-bound teams, two of those went in.
Patrick Ianni, who played the full 90 minutes on a tender ankle, said that Schmid was disappointed with his team’s listless performance, even if the game “didn’t have much meaning.” Nevertheless, the defender thinks the team’s late-season surge leaves them ready to move past this loss.
“We have had a tremendous second half to the season to get ourselves into this position,” he said. “We just know if we play the way we are capable of playing, we can beat anyone in this league. We will have tremendous home support behind us. We want to get at least one step further than we did last year.”
Despite a pair of 2-1 losses in the week—the other coming against Saprissa in the Champions League—the Sounders closed the season with a 10-2-3 (33 points) mark in the final 15 games of the season. That’s roughly equivalent to the start posted by the Los Angeles Galaxy, who were 11-1-3 (36 points) out of the gates.
Most would agree that entering the postseason on two consecutive losses is not an ideal situation. On Tuesday night, Schmid alluded to the Saprissa loss as a wake-up call for his team. Will the Sounders look at the Houston defeat in the same way?
“We have to move on and move forward,” said Kasey Keller, who finished the 2010 regular season with 11 shutouts. “It’s important for the guys to realize that they have to do more and that we are capable of doing more.”
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