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ESPN staff 7y

Brian Schmetzer praises Sounders for finding ways to win after West final

Seattle coach Brian Schmetzer praised the Sounders for finding different ways to win as they advanced to the MLS Cup final for the first time club history on Sunday.

Jordan Morris' second-half goal secured a 1-0 win in the second leg of the Western Conference final in Colorado, and the Sounders advanced 3-1 on aggregate.

"It's some of the intangibles," Schmetzer said on ESPN after the game."They never quit. Jordy [Morris] was beat up, tired. Nelson Valdez, the guys at the back, the whole team just kind of figures out ways how to win games. That's their biggest strength."

Although the Sounders have made the playoffs in every season they've been in the league, the MLS Cup berth comes in the most unlikely of seasons, which saw Seattle 10 points outside of the postseason picture when longtime manager Sigi Schmid was fired in July.

Then in August, star player Clint Dempsey was sidelined for the rest of the season with an irregular heartbeat.

But Schmetzer, a longtime assistant under Schmid, still managed to lead Seattle to a fourth-place finish in the West, though he declined to take credit on Sunday, instead thanking his staff and players.

"I had [Nicolas] Lodeiro come, we had Roman [Torres] come back, I had some inspired play by our captain now, Ozzie [Alonso]. Everybody pitched in," Schmetzer said.

"[Erik] Freiburg, who was a late scratch today, busted his you-know-what to get us to this point, so it's the whole entire team effort that has brought us here."

Schmetzer cited a 3-1 win at Orlando City on Aug. 7 as being instrumental to the team's turnaround. From that point, Seattle won eight of their remaining 13 MLS games, losing just two.

"Each game is different. The LA game away, Orlando away, this game here against a tough opponent, they find ways to win," Schmetzer said.

"I always hark back to that Orlando game when Deuce was still here, because Dempsey was a big part of the team. He's still a big part of our team.

"They really felt that they could start winning some games after that performance. That was a strong performance for us."

Morris became the second MLS rookie to score in both legs of a conference championship, joining the Galaxy's Greg Vanney in 1996.

He credited an increase in confidence for helping him overcome a slow start to lead the team with 12 goals in the regular season.

"At the beginning of the year things weren't going in. I was listening too much to the outside world," Morris said. "I put that all away and once I got the first goal I kind of got the monkey off my back and I'm playing with more confidence. That's the biggest thing."

The Rapids took 16 shots to Seattle's five, but the hosts failed to put any on target.

"We had a couple of good looks on goal,'' Colorado coach Pablo Mastroeni said. "Those go in and it's a whole different game. I thought we were in control of the game, we did everything we set out to do and to get beat on a strange play, that's football."

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