If LAFC's depth wasn't already stretched enough going into their Sunday matchup with the Seattle Sounders, they found it even more stretched shortly after the contest kicked off.
Bob Bradley's men lost one of their most important players just minutes into the match when Mark-Anthony Kaye exited with an ankle injury, and saw his replacement, Andy Najar, also come off with a knock just minutes after that. Already down four players departed for international duty, it was a gut-check for the Black & Gold. And they responded, hitting the Sounders for three goals, including a brace from Danny Musovski that paced a 3-1 victory.
"To win a game where, man, there's so many things that seemed to be going against us," Bradley said after the match. "But I'm really proud of the guys. Some guys that haven't played regularly really did an excellent job tonight. Great game from Danny Musovski, we certainly feel good about the improvement we've seen in him. So tonight is a big game.
"There's some moments in a game like this where guys made plays, whether it's blocking a shot, getting a ball off the line. So, we've had many nights where after games we can talk about some of the football. But tonight is a night more just about really good mentality and an important, really good team win."
On the Sounders side, it was an uncharacteristically erratic night in front of goal for a team that had previously been rolling, winning five of their previous six MLS matches to shoot atop the Western Conference table.
After the match, head coach Brian Schmetzer said he felt as though his team created enough quality chances to deliver a result, but simply couldn't convert. The Sounders put up 19 shots, but only found the net with one — a 77th-minute free-kick golazo from Nicolas Lodeiro.
"I thought there was a lot [good chances]," Schmetzer said. "Kelvin [Leerdam] misses on the set piece that Nico delivers and then they go down and their guy puts it in. So two high-quality chances, one team puts there's away and the other one doesn't. Funny game in the sense that I just don't know if we could have manufactured more quality chances, it's just that today we didn't put them in the back of the net.
"It wasn't just the final action. A lot of guys were able to find openings to shoot. Even father back on the field, there were so many times where we pressed LAFC higher up the field. We rewarded ourselves with a transition moment and then we weren't able to find that pass -- we weren't able to find Jordan in behind or start our transition sequences with a pass that breaks their line of pressure. I thought there was a lot of individual plays that our team could have done better. And I don't know if that's they were over-confident, not confident, just the way the game was. I don't know. I wish I had an answer for that but we'll certainly as a coaching staff go over the film and try and give them the tools to be successful."
