There were so many things working against the Seattle Sounders before they took the field on Sunday. It wasn’t just that Clint Dempsey was out, or that Nicolas Lodeiro went and got himself suspended for the match.
They were also playing their third game in nine days — including two on the road that took them the length of the West Coast. Just before kickoff, they learned that Andreas Ivanschitz would need to be scratched from the starting lineup.
Then Alvaro Fernandez went down with a hamstring injury just nine minutes in, and his replacement Oniel Fisher gave up a penalty to put the Sounders in a 25th minute hole.