Two goals, and it still was not enough
Dejan Joveljic scored early in each half on his Seattle Sounders debut last weekend. Seattle led 1-0, then 2-1, and finished with a single point after the visiting Chicago Fire equalised late for a 2-2 draw. The MLS winless run stretched to 10 matches, a 0-8-2 sequence that has swallowed most of the season.
“I’m happy because I scored in my first game, two goals,” Joveljic said. “I’m not fully happy because we didn’t take all three points. I have the feeling like we lost the game.”
The Serbian arrived from Sporting Kansas City in a $6 million deal. Seattle paid it because the numbers had collapsed. A club that opened the season 7-1-3 now sits on 26 points from a 7-9-5 record, and the slide tracks almost exactly with the injury list.
Try it for $0.99.
Bodies coming back
Jordan Morris, Cristian Roldan and Hassani Dotson all came off the bench last weekend after long absences. Paul Arriola, out since Aug. 1 with a calf problem, is expected to be available on Saturday. Jesus Ferreira remains sidelined with a hamstring injury.
The visitors are the New York Red Bulls, level with Seattle on 26 points at 7-10-5 and winless in four, a run that includes a 3-1 home defeat by Philadelphia last weekend. Two teams on identical points, both unable to close matches out, meeting at the end of a long week.
Bradley’s answer
“There’s accountability every day, so we promise you that we look hard at every little thing, we’re very honest with ourselves,” Red Bulls coach Michael Bradley said of the run. “We have a really good way of working, of looking at things, of understanding the things that have to continue to get better. But it’s not just as simple as to say that’s unacceptable, and all of a sudden it’ll never happen again.”
New York open a four-match road trip in Seattle. Their most reliable source of goals is 18-year-old Julian Hall, an All-Star with nine goals and five assists in 22 league appearances, who signed a new four-year contract last week.
Discover the rest of our football news on MathODDS!
in your pocket.
Real-time notifications & alerts
Leave a Reply