The Sounders have been consistent, consistently poor as of late

Closing out is a collective skill that all teams are tasked with. The Sounders struggled to close out their games prior to the World Cup and the games after the World Cup. In each loss, they have struggled in critical moments and in significant games. That is abnormal for the Sounders, who have been the gold standard in the MLS for over a decade.

So what does that mean for the season going forward?

The Sounders have demonstrated what happens when bad choices are made on the defensive end, turning the ball over and allowing the opposition to take advantage by putting the ball in the back of the net. In part, this is because of injuries to players like Kee-Hee and Yeimar, and in part because their replacements are younger players making younger-player mistakes.

According to Brian Schmetzer, Peter Kingston was good, Stewart Hawkings was ok, and Snyder Brunell lacked the confidence to push the limits of his skills, making it harder for him to utilise them and translate them into benefits for the team.

As the veterans return and the youth gain more experience, the Sounders' defensive unit will be tougher to crack, but that takes time. Nouhou Tolo's cramping in his 300th game for the Sounders, and Ragen's late second yellow may impact their next couple of games as more youthful players will have to step it up. Brian Schmetzer explained after the game that all the players, both the youth and the veterans, needed to make better choices and that Paul Rothrock and their set pieces needed to be more effective.

The Sounders did perform better in Texas than they did against the Timbers, and their time spent controlling the action of the game has been increasing, but are they posing a consistent goal-scoring threat?

Rothrock is leading the team in goals with 6, having scored in Texas in an unusual redirect with his thighs as he went to his knees to put in an equalizer. The first issue is the connecting passes from the back to the front. For years Christian Roldan and first Ozzie Alonzo and then Obed Vargas worked with Roldan to connect the lines. Alonzo and Vargas have moved on, and Roldan is out with a quad issue.

If the ball gets up to the front, there is a lack of off-the-ball runs to open up defenses and the Sounders end up standing around waiting for something to happen. When something does happen, their strikers have been less than potent at turning chances into goals. Where the defense can be healed up and developed, the Sounders lack a lethal goal scorer, and their attempts to score goals by a team of auxiliary attackers have not been working.

What is the same, what is different?

In this run of losses, what has been the same has been poor pass choices out of the back and a lack of finishing on the offensive end. There have been scores of differences. Except for their rivalry game against the Timbers, the Sounders have been in control for much of the other three losses. They have failed to capitalize on their chances and have struggled to gel defensively, including the transition from defense to offense.

Prior to the World Cup, the Sounders had done well. They lost their focus in a couple of games right before the break, which cost them points. Then there was that thing against Portland, where you could argue that they didn't show up. Their next game was sweltering in Texas, where the game was postponed due to heat concerns, and the game-time temperature was still pushing 100 degrees.

Bad teams have issues with losses snowballing. This happens when players get sucked into the notion that they need to play outside of their game to get wins, only making the entire team weaker. Schmetzer claims that the club has too many veterans such as Yeimar and Frei, that can help avoiding that pitfall. Some changes may need to be made, but it is far too early to be claiming that "the sky is falling" on the gold standard-bearing team of the MLS.

There is still half of the season to play, and eventually some bounces will favor the Rave Green. As veterans such as Albert Rusnák and Jesus Ferreira continue to find ways to set up their teammates for success, and players such as Jordan Morris, Yeimar, Kee-Hee, Nikola Petković, the Roldan brothers, and Pedro de la Vega continue to heal and the youth gain more experience, the Sounders could still be up for a deep push into the postseason, but for right now, things seem dire.

Add us as a preferred source on Google