All too familiar of a fate

Sounders seem to be stuck playing out very similar matches.

SEATTLE — As the ball left Obed Vargas’ foot, it looked for a moment like the Seattle Sounders might pull off a deserved but fortuitous result.

For almost 90 minutes on Saturday, the Sounders had mostly dominated FC Dallas. The Sounders held decisive advantages in terms of shots, chances and possession, but were once again relatively wasteful and found themselves tied 1-1.

At 89:30 on the clock, though, it looked for a moment like they had gotten a reprieve. An FC Dallas defender hit a poor clearance that fell perfectly for Vargas, who took a few steps and then put his laces through a shot from about 35 yards out. The hit was pure, with a steady rise and slight bend that sent the ball toward the upper right corner of the goal and well outside the reach of goalkeeper Maarten Paes.

Unfortunately, the rise was just a little too strong and it soared a few inches too high. The Sounders would get a couple more half-chances before fulltime, but nothing that came as close as that chance before being forced to settle for yet another disappointing home result.

The tie was perhaps a fitting way to head into a nearly five-week break in the regular season so that teams can play in a newly reformatted Leagues Cup. Although the underlying numbers suggest the Sounders have played just about as well as anyone, the only stats that really matter are far less impressive.

The Sounders sit fourth in the Western Conference table, five points out of first place. Most frustratingly, they’ve now played 13 of their 17 home games and have just 22 points to show for it. The 1-1 tie with FC Dallas is the seventh time they’ve failed to collect full points at home and continues a three-month stretch of home games in which they’ve not won consecutive games nor scored multiple goals.

“These guys have come up with a stat that we are top of the league in terms of Expected Goals,” Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer said. “It doesn’t matter.”

What made the Dallas game even more frustrating is that the feelings around the team were borderline buoyant a week earlier. The Sounders were coming off a hard-fought and well-earned 3-2 road win over the Vancouver Whitecaps, marking the first time they’d won consecutive games and just the second time they’d scored multiple goals in a game since early April.

Rather than building on the momentum, they instead turned in one of their worst performances of the season, a 2-0 loss to the San Jose Earthquakes. Surprisingly, the Sounders opted to barely rotate their lineup for that game. That set up another lightly rotated lineup against Dallas, who was short-handed but well-rested.

Despite a starting lineup that featured seven outfield players making their third start of the week, to their credit the Sounders were the clearly better team and they came out on top of virtually every effort metric. Still, it was at least a little odd that Schmetzer only used two of his five subs on Saturday. For the week, Schmetzer used 9 of 15 substitutes.

“The team that was out there was still creating chances,” Schmetzer said when asked about the lack of changes. “It’s as simple as that. I thought the guys were okay.”

Aside from the familiar faces, the Dallas game had many of the hallmarks of many of the recent home matches. The Sounders had plenty of decent chances, were plagued by poor finishing and they managed to give up a goal against the run of play.

The Sounders started strong and created a couple of early chances, the best of which Cristian Roldan put off the post. Not to be deterred, they continued to press and were ultimately rewarded when Roldan’s strong back-post run forced an own goal from a Léo Chú cross.

Dallas was able to equalize just 10 minutes later, though. Despite some proactive defending that nearly forced a turnover, the Sounders were caught napping when Nouhou failed to pick up Bernard Kamungo’s run, giving him an open look at a header from 10 yards out that Stefan Frei was unable to stop.

The Sounders had a chance to equalize almost immediately when Raúl Ruidíaz played in Albert Rusnák with an exquisite pass. Rusnák attempted to touch it around Paes, who made a good play to stop that chance, but the rebound fell directly to the feet of Ruidíaz, who had an open goal only for his first touch to fail him badly. Paes easily recovered the heavy touch.

It was that kind of night for the Sounders and two-thirds of the way through the season, far too many of their matches have followed a similar script. Something is going to have to give.

There is more than a grain of truth to the internal belief that if the Sounders can just stay healthy, the results will follow. It’s notable, though, that this game featured a nearly full-strength side. Morris might not be fit and Lodeiro was given a partial day off, but both played and were ultimately unable to contribute to any actual goal-scoring.

“It’s not enough to play well and feel like you deserve three points, you just need to win those points and grind out games,” Cristian Roldan said. “We have to find the right balance of being tough to beat, not conceding goals we shouldn’t and playing the pretty football that we’re used to seeing.”