Analysis: Minnesota United’s 10-round shootout with Sounders had a bunch of subplots all its own

There is simply not a good place to begin with a game like Saturday’s Minnesota United penalty shootout victory over the Seattle Sounders to decide their first-round playoff series.

Not in a game like that. Not in a game with six goals, with Seattle scoring twice in the first eight minutes and once in the final three, with the Loons going down to 10 men while down a goal and, impossibly, scoring twice in the second half to turn a certain loss into a second-half lead.

So, begin with the end. Begin with the penalty shootout, which was its own self-contained game-within-a-game.

Start where it ended, with Sounders goalkeeper Andrew Thomas, whom the Sounders substituted into the game as soon as they had tied the match at 3-3 with a late goal. Thomas is the backup, but starting keeper Stefan Frei isn’t great against penalties, so Seattle decided to go with Thomas instead.

Joaquín Pereyra created two magic moments in normal time, with a sublime free-kick goal and an absolutely perfect corner kick that led to another, but he led off the shootout by rolling his shot wide. Thomas, though, came up screaming in pain, having injured his hand with his save attempt.

It was merely the opening salvo in a fusillade of drama.

Jordan Morris hit the crossbar for Seattle; Loons goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair jumped up to give the bar a kiss. The Loons sent out mild-mannered midfielder Owen Gene, followed by three center backs; all, somehow, scored. St. Clair nearly won it with a save on Georgi Minoungou in Round 6, but he could only deflect the kick into the side netting.

All told, in two first-round penalty shootout losses, Seattle hit the woodwork of the south goal at Allianz Field five times.

“There’s something about that net, I don’t know,” St. Clair said. “They gotta keep it there, though. … You want to save everything, but for me, a miss is as good as a save.”

In the eighth round, Osaze de Rosario again could have won it for Seattle; St. Clair stopped his penalty, to rapture from the Allianz Field faithful, who feed off of St. Clair’s shootout energy. After Bongokuhle Hlongwane scored for the Loons, Alex Roldan — one of the Seattle players who hit the post in the Game 1 shootout — stepped up for the Sounders, while St. Clair repeatedly pointed at the post he’d hit. Instead, Roldan scored.

With all nine outfield players having taken their turn in the shootout, it came down to St. Clair. Of course it came down to St. Clair. According to the MLS Goalkeeper of the Year, he hadn’t taken a penalty in a competitive game since he was playing center back at 12 years old.

So of course, in the moment, St. Clair pulled out a Kelvin Yeboah-style pause in his run-up, sending Thomas the wrong way and rolling his kick into the back of the net.

The keeper said Yeboah hadn’t given him a rating on his stutter-step. “He told me not to steal his idea,” he said.

Thomas then lined up for the Sounders. He went high, down the middle — but his attempt cannoned back off the crossbar, which St. Clair rewarded with another smooch, before the rest of the team dogpiled the keeper into his beloved south net.

“I think it’s a match you don’t always get to experience,” said Pereyra, in Spanish. “Some people are never lucky enough to experience it, and today we were fortunate enough to win.”

By the time it was over, Loons coach Eric Ramsay said he had just become another fan, albeit one with one of the best seats in the house. “It gets to silly territory, beyond six and seven [rounds]. ... You almost have to just enjoy those moments because they are so beyond your control,” he said. “They’re phenomenal moments to be a part of as a spectator, as a coach, as someone who has a front-row seat to that sort of stuff.”

If there’s a downside to winning such an epic game for the Loons, it’s that they were even in that situation to begin with.

Ramsay was extremely frustrated, even in the joy of victory, that his team had once again struggled to start the game. He was also clearly unhappy with Joseph Rosales’ red card, earned for foolishly confronting Jesus Ferreira, which led to a possibly accidental headbutt.

“I’m sure if you speak to the players, [I was] as visibly angry and as disappointed as I’ve been in the group, on account of how we started the game, and Rosales’ sending off,” Ramsay said of his message at halftime. “We can lose to a good team in Seattle for sure, going toe-to-toe, but to shoot ourselves in the foot through the organization on the set play that leads to … the second goal, and then for Rosales to do what he does in that moment is clear to everyone, unprofessional. That puts us in a real hole.”

Even so, according to Pereyra, the team was ready to fight. “I went into the locker room here at halftime, and you always feel the energy of your teammates and what’s going on in the locker room,” he said in Spanish via translation provided by the team. “And the energy was very positive, it was everything: words of encouragement, telling us to keep going, telling us to have faith. The group had faith. They had faith the whole time, they went for it, they showed character.”

It was the continuation from Monday’s Game 2 in Seattle, when the Loons trailed 3-0 early — but were proud, postgame, that they had fought back and cut the lead to 3-2 at halftime. It set the tone for another comeback in Game 3, even after they were down 2-0 and even after they were down to 10 men at 2-1.

“I think when we went down early, we had that confidence that we’d been there before and we’d fought back,” St. Clair said. “Getting a goal before the half changes a lot, and then when you’re only down one goal, especially knowing you’re going to go into penalties, anything can happen.”