By Chris Wright
Last night’s US Open Cup tie between Portland Timbers and Seattle Sounders devolved into a quite incredible farce as Sounders – the defending champions – ended the game four men light following a spate of late red cards.
Firstly, Sounders midfielder Brad Evans was sent off in the 69th minute for picking up a second yellow shortly before Obafemi Martins was carted off the pitch on a stretcher in the 87th minute, just eight minutes after scoring the equaliser to level things at 1-1.
As Sounders had used all of their substitutes by this juncture, they were forced to play on with nine men as the game went to extra time.
It was then that things took a turn for the berserk, with Sounders’ going 2-1 down in the 100th minute just before Michael Aziri picked up a straight red for a 113th-minute foul on Timbers’ Gaston Fernandez.
The third red card then came almost instantaneously, with an irate Clint Dempsey being ejected for grabbing the referee’s notebook out of his hand, tearing it in half and chucking it on the floor…
Well, that’s certainly a new one on us!
The sequence of ill discipline left the Sounders with seven men on the pitch as Timbers, suddenly afforded with lots of fresh space to exploit, duly went on to score gain in the 116th minute through Maximiliano Urruti to make it 3-1.
This sparked a hail of caterwauling boos from the home Sounders crowd, with the referee and his officials having to be escorted off the pitch by police after the final whistle.
Fun, fun, fun in the US Open Cup!
(Via ESPN FC)