TUKWILA, Wash. – Clint Dempsey and Obafemi Martins aren’t just making highlights for the Seattle Sounders. They’re making history.
Seattle’s dynamic forward duo continued their blistering goal-scoring pace in the Sounders’ 3-1 romp over New York City FC last weekend, combining for all three goals and bringing their cumulative total for the 2015 season up to 11 in just eight games. The torrid start has laid waste to any questions as to whether they could live up to the lofty standards they set last season, when they combined for 32 goals and 23 assists despite Dempsey missing portions of the season to captain the US national team.
If they keep up their current record-breaking pace it’s entirely possible – perhaps even likely – that they will go down as the top duo MLS has ever seen.
Just ask Sounders head coach Sigi Schmid, who has coached in MLS since 1999 and is no stranger to premier offensive talent, and yet still maintains that he has never seen anything quite like the run his star strikers are on at the moment.
“For me, as a coach, I’ve never had a better duo than those two,” Schmid said following Seattle’s training session Wednesday at Starfire Soccer Complex. “In terms of just guys who are lethal and can finish, it’s probably the best pair of forwards I’ve ever had the chance to work together with.”
So how does the tandem stack up statistically against some of the other great duos in the history of MLS? If they aren’t already there, they are certainly on pace to claim a spot at or near the top of the list.
In 85 games together, Dempsey and Martins have scored 45 of Seattle’s 93 team goals, good for 48.39 percent of their overall total. That percentage ranks No. 1 among the other top goal-scoring tandems in league history, the second being D.C. United tandem Roy Lassiter and Jaime Moreno, who tallied a combined 60 goals, good for 47.24 percent of the team’s production over their 106 games together.
The top goal-scoring duo in league history is New England’s Taylor Twellman and Pat Noonan, who bagged 105 goals in 247 games, accounting for 43.39 percent of the team’s production in that span.
While Dempsey-Martins’ is a relatively small sample size and leaves plenty of time for their current pace to even out, Schmid says Seattle’s attack as a whole is still progressing. The ever-evolving understanding between Dempsey, Martins and the rest of their teammates, Schmid said, means there are even greater heights that can be reached.
“[Martins] is going into his third year with us,” Schmid said after the victory over NYCFC. “The guys have a better understanding of when he’s going to show and go. … The understanding, not just between Dempsey and Oba, which has always been good, the understanding between the rest of the team and Oba is getting better and better all the time.”
The brilliance of Dempsey and Martins isn’t limited to their ability to put the ball in the back of the net.
They are both also elite-level facilitators, a facet of their game that can be easily seen in how they combine and play off one another and the 30 assists they have tallied in that same 85-game timeframe. The chemistry and understanding between them appears almost telekinetic at times, baffling opposing defenders and regularly leaving teammates in awe on the practice field.
Dempsey has likened the improvisational and imaginative nature of the partnership to kids playing street ball, saying that Martins is one of his favorite players that he has ever played with.
“I love playing with Oba,” Dempsey said after Seattle’s 3-0 season-opening blowout of the New England Revolution on March 8. “He’s one of the players that I’ve enjoyed the most playing with in my career. It reminds of being a kid playing pick-up style just knowing that we think alike, that if you make a run he’s going to find you. He makes players better around him.”
- Get more Seattle news at SoundersFC.com
After Martins burned the Colorado Rapids for one of the top highlights of the MLS season on April 18 – a perfect touch off a long pass from Andy Rose that split two defenders – Seattle midfielder Lamar Neagle could only smile and laugh.
“Just watching like everybody else, man,” Neagle said. “Oba’s one of a kind in this league. He proves it week after week. Us teammates know it the most because we see him in training every day. It’s just something normal. You see it and you’re amazed but then you’re like, ‘Eh, it’s Oba.’”
Whether the tandem can maintain their historic pace to such a staggering degree is certainly not a foregone conclusion. But if they continue to produce at a similar level through this season and in years to come, they’ll certainly deserve consideration as the best one-two punch the league has ever seen.
