Sounders coach laments early miss

'We couldn't break them down,' Brian Schmetzer says of Timbers defense

By Steve Brandon

The Portland Tribune, May 13, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

Seattle coach Brian Schmetzer says Portland and other teams have done well at limiting 2007 league MVP Sebastien Le Toux's scoring this season.

/ COURTESY OF SEATTLE SOUNDERS

Seattle Sounders coach Brian Schmetzer says his team had its chances to beat Portland at Qwest Field on Saturday.

The game ended in a 0-0 tie, and left Schmetzer contemplating possible adjustments and hoping for the speedy recovery of forward Roger Levesque, who has been out with a sore ankle.

In the seventh minute against Portland, Sounders forward Andre Schmid sailed a short shot over the crossbar.

“That was a pretty dramatic turn of events,” Schmetzer says. “We score that goal early and then Portland has to come out. They just can’t pack it in and play counter/set piece.”

Timbers coach Gavin Wilkinson injected a third forward, Chris Bagley, into the starting lineup that features forwards Chris Brown and Takayuki Suzuki. Wilkinson said he wanted to try going harder at the Seattle defense.

Schmetzer, however, didn’t see the move as a strategy designed to score a lot of goals.

“To me, that lineup was a 4-5-1,”he says. “Basically, it was Bagley up front and nine guys behind the ball. I don’t think Suzuki and Brown are speed burners at getting in behind defenses, so (Wilkinson) had a big target guy (Bagley) and two very quality soccer players, who we know firsthand about, behind him.

“I wouldn’t say that was a team that was designed to fly up and down the field.”

But Schmetzer says perhaps the biggest disappointment from his perspective was the lack of action in the second half of game two between the Northwest rivals (Portland beat defending league champion Seattle 2-0 at PGE Park on April 26).

“It was a shame that with 10,000 people in the stands the second half wasn’t a little more entertaining,” he says. “The first half was good, from the home team’s standpoint. In the first 20 to 25 minutes, we were able to get in behind them and be dangerous. We were energized, we had the home crowd, it was our home opener, the atmosphere was good. Guys were excited to play after having three road games, and we had a little bit of revenge on our minds.

“Then Gavin made some adjustments and backed the lines up a little, and we ran out of some steam.

“The second half ended up with Portland hitting back and my guys not having enough creativity to break what I call a very organized defensive team. We couldn’t find a way to break them down.”

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