Sounders win their biggest game to date

Home field or home court is a known advantage but when it is a brightly sunned Sunday afternoon in late June, in your damn near new Sounder Stadium, and the warm up act is the Confederation Cup Finals from South Africa broadcast on the Wide Screen for the pre-noon arrivals and the US team goes up 2-0 on fabled Brazil, when you have 30,000 fans show up for every single seat, and more would come if they could find tickets — then it is a true advantage.

And, though no one will prop right up and say it, you should win — everyone is for you, no one is against you, you know the food and the pillow and the parking and the towels and the cop who waves your car through, security says good luck, and for the most part, they pronounce your name correctly. Of course, the should-win is its own curse and baggage but only if you let the game get away. And for this Sunday, against their closest rivals, the Colorado Rapids, a team they had already played twice before, the Sounders did not let the game get away, and won 3-0.

The score gives a narrow cast to the actual game. It was more a collision than an elegant affair, filled with enough contention, especially in the crucial first half, that at one point it seemed the very arguments would drag the script well into the afternoon. The Rapids wanted desperately to win. They had not lost in eight games, they sat a single point behind the Sounders in the Western Standings. They are a proud, aggressive, confident team, 12 years older than the Sounders, veterans of MLS, veterans of what can and cannot be, both in terms of their team and their individual play. The 30,000 Sounder fans were only more grist to the Rapids, who clearly intended to blast away at the upstart Sounders.

It was quietly the biggest game in Sounder history. If they had flinched, or sought pause, or even failed, then the verdict was in — they were just an expansion team, a good one, but not more than that. But these Sounders have big broad-chested dreams that go all over the place and all over the world of soccer, dreams that lever the very style of soccer in this country, dreams that push MLS into world play. They are not in the slightest sense eager to be brought back to earth. They knew Colorado would come gunning for them; by winning, they now know they can take that punch.

Seattle draws more fouls than any other team in the league and Freddie Ljungberg draws more fouls than any other player in the league and this game was but nine minutes old when Ljungberg was first tripped. The tactic, now league legend, is to trip and pound Ljungberg and Fredy Montero, and thereby freeze up the Sounder offense. By season's end, the accumulation may work but at the moment, tripping the Swede seems more like tripping the alarm. He is quite the gentleman until you trip him, but dropped on his face, Ljungberg does indeed ignite, and he proceeds to unleash manic forces onto the course of the game.

Just this side of hell hath no fury, Ljungberg was taken down yet again, returned the favor seconds later, and then was bashed again. Colorado was given a yellow card but that was little in contrast to the fury that was now Ljungberg. He took over the entire game, its attention, its focus, its direction, yelling furiously at every referee, demanding the ball, in effect driving the entire Sounder team safely well beyond intimidation. Moments later, in the almost fair outcome, he is crossing a pass to center that is headed by Jaqua to Montero to GOAL and it is 1-0.

Colorado knew damn well that Ljungberg had seized the game. Ljungberg had become victim and avenger. Colorado now looked more like thugs than scholars. They tried every manner to get a new script, and the referee seemed to be giving them a cold glance. Pleading every call, beseeching, falling, writhing, tumbling, it might have worked; referees are humans after all. But Ljungberg is no one's fool and with every stoppage and meeting, with every argument to the referees, there was the Swede, making his case and demanding justice still. It was politics, gritty, on-the-field politics that was being played, and it takes a veteran to play it well.

Without Ljungberg, Colorado, with its veteran midfielder Mastroeni, might well have wagered all its cunning and craft and recovered this game. Indeed, at the 39th minute, Colorado nearly was saved. From a free kick, the ball blasted and hit the crossed arm of a Sounder defender. That invoked the best, last, and longest screaming match of the game, with six Sounders pleading the referee. The depositions were each presented, the case seemed just but the referee knew it was a crucial time to, whatever the details, remain firm — penalty kick, Colorado, to tie this game and give them life, at the worst time, eight minutes before half-time. Omar Cummings, the wonderful very rapid Rapid, took the PK and it would have gone in, and who knows what fates unleashed, but somehow it hits the post. Even the referee was quietly saved.