By Michael Vitz-Wong
As the remainder of the Seattle Sounders season is quickly looking to tip from disappointment into outright failure, the explanations come hard and hollow. The now-healthy backline continues to reluctantly but assuredly admit goals. New signings are promised to a roster that brought Clint Dempsey back from injury over the offseason. Every home shutout spent grinding out single goal victories is punctuated by winter-has-come blowouts on the road. The Sounders are not performing like champions; in fact, they aren’t even performing as a playoffs team.
I refuse to give any grounds to the notion that just because they turned it around last year they can do it again.
While the Seattle defense features well-documented failures, it also sports a consistent hierarchy to its depth chart and defined roles for every expected starter. The offense, on the other hand, is broken in a way that is more easily explained by abstracts like poor form, poor finishing, or poor positioning. As the halfway mark of the MLS season approaches, Coach Brian Schmetzer still hasn’t figured out how to get his front four to click.
Returning Dempsey to Nicolas Lodeiro’s midfield hasn’t unleashed hell’s fury; rather, hell appears to have frozen over. The two don’t combine with each other so much as they create space for each other’s individual brilliance, which would be fine if they weren’t both having individually mediocre campaigns. Jordan Morris has been almost entirely ineffective on both the wing and up top, with only two goals on the season. Besides having Cristian Roldan do absolutely everything, when Seattle gets into the final third they sound as punch-less as a novice improv comedian.
Will Bruin, the team’s leading goalscorer, is the only player seeing returns on his effort. Brought on to be Morris’s backup, Bruin has forced Morris to the wing and is making a good case to be the outright starting forward. With imminent national team duty for Morris and Dempsey, Bruin has a good chance to make his position reflect the depth chart, not the weekly tactics. The question of best offensive shape remains to be answered, but it will most likely happen by the feet of Bruin over the next month. Even with Bruin’s name in ink up top, how does Schmetzer make the most outof Dempsey and Lodeiro’s creative capabilities or get literally anything out of Morris?
Figure 1
*Warning: you are know entering the realm of speculation.*
Will Bruin plays as a prototypical American striker: burly in his hold-up play and opportunistic over the top with a poacher’s finish in the box. Bruin does not possess any world-breaking characteristics like Morris’s speed, but he’s a much cleverer passer in tight spaces and checks back into possession more than Morris. While we know how Clint Dempsey respects talent moreso than anything else, Bruin’s skillset may complement Dempsey’s style of play more than Jordan Morris. Having a true #9 up top may help push Dempsey closer to goal in his morefavorable withdrawn forward role (we all know how much Dempsey likes forming partnerships with #9’s). This would play more like the 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1 (fig. 3) of Sounders glory past – a return to a shape steeped in Sigi Schmid’s 7-year influence on the MLS franchise, but a shape not yet deployed by Brian Schmetzer as manager.
Figure 2
While Morris has been passable on the left wing in Schmetzer’s 4-2-3-1 (fig. 1), a move deeper to left mid in a 4-4-2 would only amplify his weaknesses outside his preferred forward position. Not only would the formation require stricter commitment to defense in the first bank of four, the left mid needs to be able to combine safely and carry possession out of the back and stretch horizontally as well as vertically. The classic Sounders 4-4-2 often features a direct winger balancing a wide playmaker (think Neagle to Pappa), so ideologically Morris could be forgiven for playing opposite Lodeiro. However, I side with caution regarding the sanctity of keeping players in (or at least near) their learned positions. At least we can be confident that the Alonso-Roldan partnership was destined for an empty bucket center midfield.
“But Michael, Harry Shipp is hardly a direct winger befitting a 4-4-2.” You’re right! But Aaron Kovar, Henry Wingo, and Seattle’s supposed incoming DP are all fast and natural wingers who can track back defensively.
Figure 3
While none of those options are proven in MLS yet, with Nouhou Tolo’s surging performances the past few weeks, I would be delighted to see Joevin Jones moved into midfield and instructed to incisively yin Lodeiro’s right mid yang. This is the role he played as a sub against Houston, on the road against Columbus, and as a regular for Trinidad and Tobago. Or Schmetzer can play Shipp as a defensive winger on the road (this seemed to be his go-to until Alvaro Fernandez’s impending departure signaled a move away from the defensive winger).
I can’t promise that my musing will work, but what’s the point of watching sports if you don’t muse out loud? Figure 3 recognizes the Sounders’ most consistent performer (Bruin) and builds relationships around their best two players’ ideal positions (Dempsey at Second Striker and Lodeiro as the lone #10). The rest of the midfield has flexibility and logic, with Shipp, Svensson, Kovar, and Jones offering a diversity of tactical instincts to the left and central midfield. And now that I’ve gotten you this far, admit it: you also want to see super-sub Jordan Morris run at tired defenders.
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