SEATTLE — The degree to which the Seattle Sounders had been struggling over the past month had probably been a bit overstated. There had been games where they’d played well and simply failed to find the back of the net. The last time the Sounders faced the Vancouver Whitecaps, for instance, looked a lot like this one, aside from the scoreline.
But the one thing that had been missing from the previous five matches was a well-constructed goal from the run of play that gave the Sounders an early lead. In other words, they had not really had the kind of play from which a team can draw energy.