Cascadia Nights: The Ballad of Leo Chú
Sounders celebrate Chú’s performance, rue Chú’s celebration as Sounders slip in second half and tie Portland 2-2
The Sounders carried a lot of baggage into their game against the Timbers on Saturday, September 2, 2023, their last of the regular season against their archrival. The previous two games had not gone to plan, to put it lightly. In May, the Sounders had brought a 1-0 lead against Portland into the final twenty minutes of the game before giving up four goals in what ended up being a horrific loss. The next game was an uneventful 0-0 tie.
The Sounders began the game a bit slowly, missing some passes in the first few minutes, but the team quickly organized themselves for a corner kick around the nine-minute mark, and Raul Ruidíaz poked the ball in the net with a beautifully executed header. Seattle led, 1-0.
The Sounders continued to push forward on offense, threatening a couple times over the next fifteen minutes before the 30th minute, when Leo Chú charged ahead from midfield, sped by Timbers defenders, and booted it behind David Bingham to increase the Sounders lead to 2-0. Chú played the ball beautifully, showcasing his astounding skill, and showing why the Sounders look to him to create goals. He also celebrated by taking his shirt off, incurring an automatic yellow card.
Seattle and Portland both traded opportunities to score over the remainder of the first half. The Sounders’ greatest chance came in the 35th minute with a Leo Chú cross to Ruidíaz right in front of the goal, but Bingham eked out a diving save just in the nick of time. The Timbers’ best shot was a memorable drive in the 40th minute that ran up against a bunched-up, disorganized Sounders defense in the box. By all rights, Portland should have scored then, but fortune had other ideas, and Sounders and Timbers alike kicked the ball around quite intensely for half a minute before Seattle took control and got the ball out of danger.
Image credit to Rio Giancarlo/SPU and Cascadia FC
The first seven minutes of the second half had the same feeling as the first half: the Sounders stood on top and in control of the game. In the 53rd minute, though, Leo Chú incurred a yellow card after a collision – giving him a red card due to his earlier yellow. This marked a sea-change in the cadence of the match, as Seattle struggled to adjust to being down a man. Portland had the initiative.
In their confusion, the Sounders gave Portland just enough time for them to claw their way back. That old adage about two-goal leads proved itself again as Dairon Asprilla knocked in a goal off a 67th-minute throw in to cut the lead in half, followed by a beautiful hook from Evander beyond the box in the 70th to equalize.
After the Timbers tied it up, the Sounders dropped back to a defensive stance, bringing in Arreaga and Atencio for Rusnák and Vargas. This worked to stem the bleeding – the Timbers didn’t score again. Neither did the Sounders, but neither team ended up with a whole lot of opportunities after the second Portland goal.
Image credit to Rio Giancarlo/SPU and Cascadia FC
Schmetzer stressed that the Sounders’ failure to put the game away was due to many factors.
“It’s not just the defending, or Leo’s yellow cards … it’s a team sport,” he noted. “And … if we had a really good first half, it would have been three-nothing, and the game would have been over. And I think that’s where everybody is super frustrated.”
Alex Roldán shared these feelings.
“It’s frustrating. We obviously showed the quality of our game in the first half, to go up 2-0 and nearly go up 3-0. It’s frustrating to give that up in the second half,” he said. “Mistakes that we can control that we ultimately gave up.”
He also noted that the team played poorer ball after Chú’s second yellow.
“You could tell with maybe our body language, we weren’t showing for the ball as we were in the first half, and some of that intensity was gone, down a guy,” he stated. “But we can’t have these excuses. When we go down a guy, it should be the same thing. Going out there and playing up to our potential, moving for each other, still making tackles, and that – it just wasn’t there today.”
Schmetzer avoided discussing the clubhouse discussion he had with Chú over his celebration, emphasizing that he had tied up those loose ends.
“I addressed it in front of the team, and it’s done. Issue – done, taken care of,” he stated. “We’re not going to discuss that [here]. That’s an internal issue. The kid is super, super talented. He’s exciting, he loves to play he’s got a smile on his face, he brings joy to the locker room, he brings joy to himself. I mean, players around the world do that. He’ll learn from it; we’re going to move past that very quick. That won’t happen again.”
Some ties feel like wins, some feel like ties, and some feel like losses. This one felt like a loss. The sting certainly wasn’t as bad as the meltdown in May against Portland, but letting a win slip out of reach, to the great rival – it’s not a good feeling.
I’ll also leave the third person to note that some online (in the usual bad-take hubs) are blaming this all on Chú’s celebration, and while his exit did put us on the back foot for the whole rest of the game, it’s not accurate to set Chú up as the scapegoat. Remember that Chú helped put us in that dominant position in the first place, and that his second yellow wasn’t inevitable. Yet, Chú’s exit was avoidable, detrimental, and hopefully to not be repeated. I think both are true.
This tie means that the Sounders have gone ten straight games without beating Portland at home, which I won’t like being reminded of for the next half a year. This tie also means that the Vancouver Whitecaps have reminded everyone of their existence by winning the Cascadia Cup. They’re in the playoff hunt, too, and so are the Timbers, and so are we, despite the fact it hasn’t felt like it for a while.
The Sounders exit the weekend second in the Western Conference. They gave one good half on Saturday, but they’ll have to finally weld themselves together over the next two weeks before their game in Dallas on the 16th.