Seattle can't solve Red Bulls: scoreless draw at Lumen Field despite total dominance

Twenty shots. Six of them on target. One off the post. And still, the scoreboard at Lumen Field stayed frozen at 0-0 between the Seattle Sounders FC and the New York Red Bulls in MLS action. For everything the home side generated going forward, none of it crossed the line, and the visitors walked away with a point that, going by the numbers, feels close to a heist.

The script of the match was set early: Seattle pushed forward, controlled the ball (51.5 percent possession) and searched for a goal again and again, while the Red Bulls sat back and leaned on the transitions of Julian Hall and Cade Cowell. The first real warning came in the 8th minute, with a header from Cristian Roldan that went wide off a cross from Albert Rusnak, and just seconds later Paul Rothrock nearly got there first in the box off a corner kick. Rusnak himself, always stirring things up for the home attack, tried his luck in the 18th minute with a shot that Ethan Horvath smothered low.

The New York Red Bulls, for their part, didn't settle for defending alone. Jorge Ruvalcaba had the clearest chance of the first half for his side in the 15th minute, with a shot that slipped just wide of the right post, and Matthew Dos Santos tried his luck from distance a minute later without success. The closing stretch of the first half had more stoppages than soccer: an injury to Kalani Kossa-Rienzi forced Seattle into an early substitution, bringing on Snyder Brunell, and referee Ricardo Fierro added three minutes of stoppage time without the score budging. The half ended with the 0-0 still intact.

A second half of siege with nothing to show for it

The restart brought more of the same, only with Seattle even more insistent. In the 52nd minute, Snyder Brunell, just on the field, rattled the right post with a shot off a cross from Peter Kingston, the clearest sign yet that the home side's luck in front of goal simply would not turn. Four minutes later, Rothrock tried again from the right side of the box, again off target. Rusnak added his name to the list of chances in the 64th minute with a shot that grazed the crossbar, and in a span of just a few minutes, between the 69th and 72nd minutes, Seattle piled up shots from Dejan Joveljic, Brunell, Stuart Hawkins and Brunell again, all turned away by the defense or the visiting goalkeeper.

The Red Bulls, meanwhile, held on with know-how and the odd scare of their own: Julian Hall had two clean-cut chances, one in the 47th minute and another at point-blank range in the 73rd, both denied by the home goalkeeper. In the closing stretch, with Eric Choupo-Moting and Emil Forsberg on the field after substitutions, the visitors also created some danger, though without the same sharpness as the home side. Paul Rothrock, who had been among the most active players, picked up a yellow card in the 80th minute and was subbed off shortly after for Paul Arriola, part of a round of changes that did nothing to alter the story of the match: Seattle pushing, Red Bulls holding firm.

What the numbers say

The gap in shots (20 to 9) also shows up in the post-match xG estimate: 1.734 for Seattle against 0.849 for the Red Bulls. It's a measure of what unfolded in the match, not a prediction, but it backs up the sense that the home side dominated without anything to show for it on the scoreboard.

The result, on top of that, runs counter to what our preview projected, giving Seattle a 55 percent chance of winning, 24 percent for a draw and just 21 percent for a visiting win, with expected goals of 1.99 for the home side and 1.19 for the Red Bulls. The draw ended up being the outcome, which our model considered the least likely of the three scenarios.

In the Eastern Conference standings, the point leaves the New York Red Bulls in 10th place with 27 points through 23 matches played (7 wins, 6 draws, 10 losses), sitting in the middle of the pack. For the Seattle Sounders, who don't appear in that Eastern Conference table since they belong to the other conference, the split point leaves them with the feeling of an afternoon where the goal simply refused to come, despite pushing all the way to the last minute of a match that closed with four minutes of stoppage time.