Sounders Lose to Houston 1-0 to End Season

I don’t get the early whistle… unless Seattle tv crew was wrong about the 3 minutes.

Sad.

look at the number of comments in the last few weeks, and then after the match we have 2 (and now 3) in the following 5 hours.

none of us know what to do/say

laurie Reply:
November 8th, 2009 at 8:25 pm

I know.  It was an effort to even come here, and you guys are my favorite blog. 

Now what are the steps in the grieving process again? 

It was an amazing inaugural season!  Now we have something more to strive for next year? …

I started the countdown timer to First Kick 2010.

Houston, we’ll accept thank your letters for developing Ching, Waibel, Weaver and your coach Kinnear, thankyou.

Terrible football.  I thought going to PKs was going to be a fair result and can’t believe Levesque didn’t do better to clear it.  So many long balls on both sides, it wasn’t pretty to watch.  Was the pitch just bad to play on the ground or what?

Where was our midfield?  There was no connection between our defensive line and forwards.  Again, just long balls.  Very frustrating and not at all fun to watch.

Nate Jaqua had his worst game of the year.

I’m kind of curious why Zakuani and Montero were subbed off, Montero was the only one getting shots off it seemed.  I lost a bit of faith in our USL Sounders.  Levesque and Le Toux didn’t make things any better and Nyassi seemed to try too hard and focus on individual effort to earn a starting spot next year.  I thought for sure a veteran like Pete V would come on.

I’m curious to see who we protect for the expansion draft for the coming season.  It will be interesting.

Also, was Riley’s red deserved?  Very reckless and desperate, but it looked like the Houston player wasn’t hit that hard and jumped out of the way.

And why did they cut stoppage time extra short?

We are a few months from being the favorites to win it all. In Sigi we trust! Outside of that my only comment is that MLS executives should be drawn and quartered for offering and continually defending the horrific excuses for referees they present. It’s now the single biggest detriment to the growth of the game.  (Other than New England’s home field that is)

I just can’t be all that upset. I mean, yeah, a cup win would have been amazing, but to make the playoffs, win the US Open cup and sell out the season all in our first year? That is honestly enough.

Next year though… we better win!

Mike Reply:
November 9th, 2009 at 7:41 am

Never. Settle. For. Less.

Giffy Reply:
November 9th, 2009 at 9:34 am

Its not settling, its recognizing the amazing success of a team that did not exist a year ago. It was a good season and for that I am happy.

The cup would have been great, but we are a first year team.  We have to remember that.  Imagine next year after FL10 has been in Europe playing all winter and we have the chemistry we have now.  We did a lot better then anticipated before the start of the season.  It was memorable to say the least.  Let the countdown to 2010 begin!

Still can’t get over how terrible the officiating in these games have been, all season. We will be lucky to hold onto Ljungberg for another season. We are so so fortunate that he would choose to stay here when these shit referees don’t even make an effort to protect players from blatant dangerous play. That red card Riley got was literally for the EXACT SAME tackle that Ljungberg suffered at least 4 times during the entire game, none of which even receieved a caution from the ref. I thank the team and the city for giving us such an awesome season but as a league there is still a LOT of work to be done.

Possibly their worst game of the year and with 9 days to prepare. When the entire team is flat the coaching staff must take a hard look at themselves.