One of Major League Soccer’s most historic runs came to an end on Sunday as the Seattle Sounders missed out on the Playoffs for the first time.
The Sounders enjoyed an incredible 13-year run in the post-season since their 2009 inaugural season, making the MLS Cup final four times and winning the title twice.
But at long last, Seattle will have to watch the Playoffs from the sofa, with a 1-0 defeat to Sporting Kansas City on Sunday proving the final nail in their 2022 coffin.
In years to come, this season will still be regarded as a success with the Sounders, of course, becoming the first MLS team to win the Concacaf Champions League, beating Liga MX side Pumas 5-2 on aggregate in the final.
Right now, though, their domestic failure is proving a tough pill to swallow.
“This season, we’re going to call it a success because we’re the first MLS team to win the Champions League. But look, at the end of the day, right now, what everybody feels is a letdown,” head coach Brian Schmetzer said after Sunday’s loss.
“We’re not in the playoffs and that for our club is, you know, the feeling everyone has in their stomach right now. Right now we’ll try and process this…but it will take me some time to really figure out: was the season a success or was it not?”
Veteran goalkeeper Stefan Frei went as far as suggesting Seattle’s failure to make the Playoffs could be enough to ‘taint’ their CCL achievement.
“To taint such a historic positive with a historic negative is tough to swallow,” said Frei post-game. “We won the [CCL] early on, and I think at that point we made a conscious decision…to put a lot of effort, and a lot of work, and a lot of months of blood, sweat, and tears, but it wasn’t enough. And that’s very frustrating because that means it’s about five months of work and nothing to show for it, and then on top of it … it just taints that positive that we had early on. It’ll be a tough one to swallow.”
The Sounders were not helped by injuries this season, especially losing key midfielder Joao Paulo for most of the campaign, while star striker Raul Ruidiaz has been in and out with recurring problems.
But the fact remains that this is a roster with ageing players in key positions.
Continuity has been key to Seattle’s success in recent times – reaching MLS Cup four times in the last six years and winning the title twice – but is it time for an overhaul? The start of a new era?
“For me personally, certainly this hurts,” said Schmetzer. “It certainly isn’t up to the standard of this club, and again, it’s my job to give the players tools to be successful. Having said all of that, I can’t give you a definitive answer as to what went wrong.
“Maybe there needs to be a little bit of change in the roster, that always happens, that’s normal. We’ll get some fresh faces in, we’ll continue to develop the young players because I don’t push this on any of the young players – this disappointment. The young players have come along fine. But we’ll certainly as a staff start working on that when we get back home…We’ll come back, and we’ll start working on that right away because the Club World Cup is going to come up on us pretty fast.”
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