Sounders reward their fans with 2-1 victory over San Jose

Before, during and after.

The rewards came in bunches for fans of Sounders FC on a muggy June night in the Emerald City against the San Jose Earthquakes.

Before the match General Manager Adrian Hanauer stood before several thousand fans in Pioneer Square and took the microphone before the "March to the Match" to introduce Nate Jaqua, Jhon Kennedy Hurtado and Taylor Graham to the throng. "I wanted these guys to see what is going on before our matches, the way you fans are embracing the new club," Hanauer said. "Right here on the streets of Seattle." Jaqua and Hurtado, both important starters, were about to miss the night's match due to a red card and yellow card accumulations. Graham is off crutches as a broken foot mends.The fans would rather have had the boys getting ready to play, but it wasn't lost on them that the GM/Owner took the time to reward them with a visit from the three. Loud cheers greeted the sidelined heroes.

Freddie Ljungberg enjoys his first goal at Qwest Field.

Further rewards awaited the 28,999 who stood and chanted and cheered inside Qwest Field. The Sounders showed up to play, and to win. They seemed aware of the importance of the match and responded with solid first-half play. They had calls go against them but did not let it overshadow the task at hand. They pummeled San Jose goalkeeper Joe Cannon with attempts at goal but didn't lose heart when the goals just wouldn't come.

Freddie Ljungberg led the match reward parade. After so many excellent scoring chances were denied, missed or went just wide, the Swede put home his first Qwest Field goal in the 42nd minute and the rave green asylum went nuts. Fredy Montero responded too. In the 59th minute he connected on a sequence that involved Ljungberg and Patrick Ianni to put the Sounders up 2-0. The standing green throng were in heaven.

Seattle United: Sounders players greet Ljungberg's goal.

The latter parts of the match were hold-on time and despite allowing a Darren Huckerby goal on some sloppy ball work in front of their own goal the Sounders gave their fans what they have wanted since April 25th...a MLS victory.

After the match most of the Sounders players lingered and then began a journey around the entire pitch, acknowledging the supporters in all sections of the stadium. Fans stayed and cheered as a shirtless James Riley led a pack of Sounders over to the north end and around until they approached the frenzy of the south end and the Emerald City Supporters.

There the stands were rocking with flags and banners and scarves held high. It had been almost ten minutes since the final whistle but the ECS were still in strong voice and got even louder as the Sounders players lined up, grabbed hands and did the now-famous bow to their supporters that is usually seen in Europe and especially in the German leagues.

It was a rewarding night, and long overdue, even if it was indeed worth the wait.

We'll know soon enough how much the Sounders have learned from this performance. They host hot DC United this Wednesday at Qwest Field. Their reward for the evening is being asked by their fans to do it all over again a few days later.

We'll grade the Sounders night more specifically based on this earlier article coming up in a future story.

Read a match report from Prost Amerika Soccer.

Match report and quotes from Seattle Sounders FC:

SEATTLE- Freddie Ljungberg and Fredy Montero led the Seattle Sounders FC each with a goal and an assist to defeat the San Jose Earthquakes in their second match-up at Xbox Pitch at Qwest Field Saturday night. 

The victory ended a six-game winless streak for Sounders FC (5-3-5). San Jose fell to 2-8-3.

Montero scored what proved to be the decisive goal in the 59^th minute off a play started by a Ljungberg corner kick. Montero converted re-directed header by Patrick Ianni to fall at the far post for a 2-0 lead. It was Montero’s fifth goal of the season.

Seattle opened the scoring shortly before halftime. Montero stripped the ball off the feet of San Jose defender Jason Hernandez deep in their end.  He quickly dropped the ball to forward Sebastian Le Toux whose one-touch pass slipped in Ljungberg behind the defense for his second goal of the season past San Jose goalkeeper Joe Cannon.

Cannon made four saves in the match, including a reactionary block with his right heal from one of Montero’s three shots on goal, while Keller finished the match with one save and a goal against. 

Tucked home: Fredy Montero puts Seattle up 2-0 in the 59th minute.

San Jose’s lone goal came in the second half when a drop-pass from Montero was intercepted by ­substitute Shea Salinas in the Sounders’ defensive third.  He passed wide to forward Ryan Johnson whose cross inside the box across the face of the goal was finished by midfielder Darren Huckerby for his first goal of the season.

Osvaldo Alonso came off the bench in the 75^th minute after missing 343 minutes of action since suffering a right quadriceps strain two minutes into action at Colorado on May 23^rd.  ­

Seattle’s last win had been April 25, also against San Jose 2-0 at home.  Seattle will travel to San Jose for their third matchup on August 2^nd. 

The Sounders FC will host D.C. United on Wednesday June 17^th at 7:30pm PT. 

Montero signals to the crowd after his goal.

SEATTLE QUOTES

HEAD COACH SIGI SCHMID

“[This was] probably a little bit of a game with two halves. I thought in the first half, we pretty much dominated that and created a number of opportunities, and only came away with the one goal. Joe Cannon ended up making some good saves. The one save he made to his right, the other one he made with the back of his heel or his Achilles tendon or something. It was a good save nonetheless. In the second half, we got the second goal and we sort of lost the plot a little bit. I think they obviously became more aggressive. We had maybe a few too many guys who didn’t come back defensively for us, and that was the reason we made some of the changes. Obviously a bad play in the back resulted in their goal. But they got close on a couple of other opportunities. So, we need to do a better job of managing it. But you know, when you’re in a streak where we weren’t getting wins, right now, you take the win, because there’s been games where we’ve played well—in Chivas, as an example—and we came away with the loss, and probably played a better complete 90 minutes than we played today. But at the end of the day, it’s a good, solid win. We want to win when we’re at home, and we did that tonight, so I’m very proud of the effort the team put in.”

(On how well Sebastien Le Toux and Patrick Ianni played tonight…) “Yeah. I thought both of them played well. I thought Patrick did a good job in the back, was pretty solid. Sebastien was running, and his energy changed our dynamic a little bit up front. That was good. I also thought that [Fredy] Montero and [Freddie] Ljungberg did a very good job in the first half of interchanging. You saw Montero a lot on the right wing, and he did that job when he was inside and Ljungberg was on the right. They did a good job of balancing each other off. That’s the way we want to play. As they get more and more time with each other, we’ll do that better and better. The other guy who I thought was very good tonight, that maybe a lot of people didn’t notice, was Stephen King. I thought Stephen King covered tons of ground, acres of space, and he made one saving tackle I think on [Arturo] Alvarez, where Alvarez cut in—I forget if it was Alvarez or Ryan Johnson—where he came back and covered back. He was forward, he was back. I thought he was very good tonight.”

(On what he said to the referees after the game concerning the last play with Ljungberg…) “I’m not going to deal a lot with the referees. With Freddie, it was just, let’s stay focused on the game, make sure we take it all the way through the end. And then somebody kicked the ball at the end of the game and it almost hit one of the referees, and it was one of our guys who kicked it. I just told the referee, ‘You were lucky. The guy just missed you.’”

(On whether he was pleased with how the team dealt with the referees…) “Yeah, we tried to get on that. Our focus, I thought, was a lot better. There were still some little things when we got fouls called against us, you know, where the wrong people are standing in front of the ball. Brad Evans is one of our best headers of the ball, and he’s standing in front of the ball trying to slow the play down, and then he can’t get back where he needs to be, which is to head the ball. So, we need to do a better job of that.”

(On whether he has to just accept the fact that Ljungberg is a feisty player…) “Possibly. I don’t know how many times he got fouled tonight. I mean, he got fouled whatever the stats sheet says, and then there were a few other ones. At some point, too, you get frustrated with that. He’s one of the most fouled players in the league. All you want to do is get protected, and when guys are coming in from behind, that makes it a little bit more dangerous. But yeah, we want to stay focused. We want to get onto the next play. We don’t want to get caught discussing the play while the play goes on.”

Rewarding: Brad Evans celebrates with Montero.

(On whether he had private conversations with Montero and Ljungberg this week, and what was said…) “I don’t know if I had a one-on-one meeting with Ljungberg. I don’t think I did. Maybe we talked a little bit on the way out to the field, but I did talk to Freddie Montero. We talked about the energy level and…our league requires a greater endeavor and a greater energy level. I thought for 60 or 65 minutes, I thought his energy level was tremendous, and he got a well-deserved goal. He was unlucky on the other one that didn’t go in. And then maybe the gas tank got empty, but that’s what I need from him. Now we’ll get fitter and fitter with it, so I thought he was very, very good.”

(On Montero going through a scoring dry spell and whether today marked the end of that…) “Yeah, well, pressing a little bit, but it’s also just a matter of, as we play more and more together, we find our rhythm better. I thought the interchange between our guys was much better today. I thought our runs in the box were more dangerous. When [Steve] Zakuani got to the end line, that’s where we got some opportunities. There’s a lot going on. He puts pressure on himself. Every goal-scorer goes through things like that, but he leads our team with five goals, and hopefully he’ll continue to do that.”

(On how Tyrone Marshall is…) “He banged knees pretty good on that one play where the guy ran through. Was that Quincy [Amarikwa]? I’ve seen him play a lot in college. There’s a lot of guys that get bruised when they get close to him. He plays hard. He’s an aggressive player. He plays with all the energy that he is, and Tyrone happened to get in the way of one of his runs, so they banged knees.”

(On what this win does for the team’s momentum going into a tough week…) “It helps us. It certainly helps us. It’s a matter of getting back to that confidence, knowing that we can win. Sometimes you see there are probably a little bit of nerves managing the game. I thought we struggled managing the game from probably about the 75^th minute to the 85^th minute. Then I thought from the 85^th minute on, we did a good job of managing the game. We held it, we knocked it into the corners, and we slowed things down, and we drew it around. But when you haven’t won in a while, you start to get a little nervous and you start thinking, ‘Oh, hopefully it’ll happen today.’ But again, a more veteran team, we’ll have to make a lot of changes. Different people are out there all the time. What you’re trying to do is teach now, when you get into those situations, like an example of James Riley—he’s got so much energy and he wants to go forward, but now it’s like, ‘Hey, we’re winning 2-1, and some guys aren’t getting back, so maybe you need to stay here and get the ball to the guys who aren’t getting back, and balance it off that way.’ That’s why he’s cramping up at the end of the game. Not because he’s not fit, but because he ends up maybe running more than he probably should have at times. That’s something that, you got to be in those types of games to identify those kinds of situations. It’s tough to recreate that in training, because there’s no way they’re going to have the same adrenaline levels, the same intensity, in any training session that they’re going to have in the last ten minutes of a game like that. So now that you go through that, you can learn from that. Guys will understand and they’ll learn, and they’ll become better and better. It’s good for us to go through these situations like this today.”

(On whether they’ll rely more on their reserves this week since they’re playing three games…) “Well, obviously we got some guys that didn’t play today. I mean, [Jhon] Kennedy [Hurtado] didn’t play today, [Osvaldo] Alonso played limited minutes for us today as well. Nate Jaqua didn’t play today. Sanna [Nyassi] didn’t play today. There’s certain guys that are fitter and recover a little bit better than others. So we’ll make those decisions, and we’ll make those adjustments on Monday. We’re going into the game with the same amount of rest as DC. They had a pretty active game today as well, and they’ve got to fly across the country. Hopefully that’ll behoove us. But once you’re in a rhythm, I mean, players would rather play games than practice. If you look at a regular week, Wednesday’s a hard training day, so I think they’d rather play a game than have a hard training day.”

F FREDDIE LJUNGBERG

(On whether he’s glad to have won the game…) “Yeah. Of course it was nice, it was important to get the three points. But like I said earlier in the week, we played the last game here was Columbus and then down there we played Chivas. Supposedly Chivas is the best team, and Columbus won last year, and I thought we were better than them in both games. Unfortunately, we didn’t win it. We’re a young team—not by the age of the team, but it hasn’t existed that long, and people haven’t played together for that long. But I think as the season goes along, we’re going to get better and better. We’re already, I think, playing-wise, better than both those teams, but unfortunately maybe we don’t have that [advantage]. There are areas we have to concentrate more, and if we can get there by the end of the season, I see that as a positive thing. But of course, to get the three points today was nice. It had been a while. We’ve drawn five or something and lost one, which was a bit annoying, but that’s the way it is.”

(On whether he thinks he and Montero are getting more in sync as the season goes along…) “I hope so. Me and Steve work well together. I played as a winger before in my career and I tried to teach him quite a lot, maybe he needs to run more off the ball, for example. We worked quite a lot on that. He works really well and he’s a great listener. We’ll do the same, me and Fredy. We’ll try to work. Now, for example, maybe earlier in the season, I played in the midfield and I had to defend a lot and I had to go quite deep, so we didn’t get far up on the pitch. So now we’ll try to mix a little bit so we get higher up, and then we’ll have more combinations, me and Fredy.”

(On how many great shots they had early in the game and how good it felt to finally score…) “It was great. I mean, I don’t know how he kept the ball out…

I was about to celebrate, but of course, it was nice when the ball went in, because we were wondering what the hell was going on. We scored, and then we scored a second one. We felt that we could control the game and then we did maybe a sloppy mistake on their goal. And they got back into the game, and we became a bit nervous at the end. But we rode the storm and it was quite nice.”

(On his frustration with the referees today…) “Yeah. I mean, Sigi wants me to be a captain on the pitch and lead our team. And then of course, I have to stand up to the referees a little bit. It’s different here. In Europe, maybe we can talk a bit more to the referees and they see us on the same level. For example, the two times today when I squared up, the last one where I got the yellow card, he stamped straight on my ankle when I was laying down. For me, it’s my free kick and he gets the yellow card, but it’s the opposite way. That’s why I reacted and I stand up. Not in a bad way, but when people wanted me to come over here, they wanted me to bring a bit of the game and a bit of the European thing and raise the level in this country. And then of course, if things like that happen, if we’re going to have my legs look like they do at the moment, then I can only play every second game. That’s what we do. I do it for the team as well. Like I said before, we don’t want any more red cards that we had earlier in the season. So we don’t want to retaliate, but it should be okay to tell the opposition or the referee that they’re doing something wrong. I think that’s being equal on the pitch, to be honest.”

(On whether this win marks the beginning of an upturn for the team…) “Yeah. We hope so, of course. It’s going to be a hard week. It’s going to be the first time this season where we play three games in eight days. We’ll see how the squad holds up. In Europe, you rotate on your squad and you use more players and things like that. Here, you can’t do that. We don’t have that many players. It’s going to be a hard week to get full points everywhere, but we’re definitely going to try to do that.”

KASEY KELLER- Goalkeeper

(On San Jose goal near the end of the match…) “We just got complacent and didn’t clear the ball. I don’t know why and I guarantee you it won’t happen again. There is a time and place to play and that doesn’t wasn’t one of them. It is about learning and getting better with each game. What is always nice is with any player is when you make a mistake is it’s nice to win. For now it means nothing and you learn from it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

(On adjusting to playing in front of big crowd goal box every week…) “I don’t think is the problem. I think there are adjustments. I still don’t think we’re quite were we need to be on a few different things. As you can see we did so well the first half and after the second goal we just switched off and let them take the game to us and hang on for dear life. I’m not saying we need to go get the third goal or the fourth goal unless its forced but we have to play smart and do things the right way. After the second goal we kind of switched off and let them come at us and that shouldn’t happen.”

(On teams being aggressive and playing an attacking style against them…) “They do everywhere no matter where you’re at. They do it at Man U when there down by two. That is what good teams do and you have to learn how to do that. You have to say let them come and hit them on the counter. You can’t say ‘now were going to win the game’. You get back to a nice defensive position before defending.”

STEVE ZAKUANI- Forward

(On taking advantage of his speed against the defender…) “If give him confidence early on then it’s hard to beat them. I heard a few early runs and I knew I had him. It was a case of my teammates getting me the ball and letting me get passed him. It would have been nice to score more goals but it is nice getting a win.”

SAN JOSE QUOTES

FRANK YALLOP- Head Coach

(On the team having a number of first time starters…) “Darren [Huckerby] first start in nine or ten weeks and [Chris] Wondolowski starts. I thought we are getting punished on sloppy plays on set plays. We gave up an easy goal for [Fredy] Montero on the back post and you can’t do that at this level or any level at that. You can’t expect to win going two goals down.  We had a chance to tie it up at the end but we just couldn’t score, overall a frustrating game.”

(On the play of goalkeeper Joe Cannon…) “He played really well he kept us in it. Just to score right before halftime is the killer. You go in nil-nil and then you can regroup. I thought second half most of it we played really well. When you’re two-nil down on the road you don’t get many chances to come back. The referee didn’t give us many chances.”

(On being encouraged by Darren Huckerby playing 90 minutes…) “Yes, it’s good. He had a bit of an off pre-season so he didn’t have much of one. It is good to see him out on the field and I thought he did well.”

(On scoring the goal and getting back into the game…) “When Huckerby is on the field he is dangerous. For us to be a good team he needs to be on the field for us and tonight I think we played better. We got him the ball more in the second half and we seemed to be more active in the middle of the field. Our general football was better in the second half.”

(On coaching with some many changes during the middle of the season…) “It is a little bit difficult to figure out. You go into the preseason hoping guys you signed will come in and play well. You get some bad results and you try to figure out what are we going to do to change it. We have to make sure we bring in guys who are solid players. It is not easy when you change the team and I think we didn’t play so bad at times.”

DARREN HUCKERBY- Midfielder

(On his health after playing a full 90 minutes…) “Yeah, I was tired there near the end. I have had five training sessions in eight weeks so it took a lot to get through the game. It is a learning curve and I probably shouldn’t have played 90 but it turns out that we were trying to get the goal back. The first half they dominated and created a lot chances. We were clearly the better team in the second half. We were a little disappointed we didn’t get a second goal in.”

(On the physical nature of the game tonight…) “An MLS match is pretty physical but this one was more like an English game. We battled well but it wasn’t enough today. We created a few chances in the second half and like I said I think we were the better team.”

(On playing some new faces in the starting lineup…) “We had some new faces and that can make it difficult but I thought we played well. They are a tough team and they have a good fan base behind them. We didn’t get the results we wanted.”

(On playing his first game in Seattle…) “It is a great place to play not doubt about that. The fans really get behind them and it is a soccer city. It is a shame we don’t play on grass. I’m sure as they would prefer to play on grass but you can’t have everything.”

JOE CANNON- Goalkeeper

(On the play of the team tonight…) “I felt like I did alright and they didn’t create much, the couple of saves just kind of came. They had a lot of pressure and possession, I feel like tonight the first half took forever to get out there. We needed to hold on the ball a little more to weather there storm. We were unfortunate to not to go into halftime zero-zero. As far as the saves go it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t win. Right now with the guys we have the stats aren’t doing us any justice, we have some individual errors. We went down one nothing at halftime and we were disappointed. If your team is down in a place like this it is hard.”