USMNT snub drove Jordan Morris to fulfill high expectations with Sounders
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SEATTLE – It would be hyperbole to say Jordan Morris exceeded expectations during his rookie season with the Seattle Sounders, but that’s only because the bar was set so high. By almost every objective measure, he did more than enough to justify the hype.
Morris was named Major League Soccer Rookie of the Year after tallying 12 goals and four assists during the regular season. He did so despite shouldering more than his share of the attacking burden, with Obafemi Martins having left for China just before the season and Clint Dempsey sitting out with an irregular heartbeat in August.
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And in a performance that will live long in Seattle soccer lore, the hometown kid scored the goal that clinched the club’s first MLS Cup berth – while playing through a stomach bug that had him laid up in his hotel room the night before.
In theory, having checked off so many boxes should allow Morris to play with more freedom in Year 2. The 22-year-old no longer needs to be a totem to which Seattle and U.S. soccer fans attach their hopes and dreams.
From Morris’s perspective, he has long since learned the value of tuning out that outside noise.
He stopped reading his social media notifications while he was on trial with Werder Bremen in Germany in January 2016, when he was still deciding between signing with his boyhood Sounders and trying to make a go of it abroad. The only messages that got through were from his peers and heroes – Jozy Altidore, DeAndre Yedlin, Landon Donovan – and their shared experiences allowed him to feel at peace with his ultimate decision.
When Morris failed to score during his first five games as a pro, though, he couldn’t help but take a peek at the chatter on social media.
“Obviously, there was a lot of expectation and to a lot of people, I wasn’t delivering. That was tough and I let that get to me,” Morris said. “Then I realized that it doesn’t really matter. I don’t really read Twitter anymore. I let that go.”
Then-coach Sigi Schmid could see the anguish etched into his young striker’s face as his goal drought grew ever more parched. After a training session last spring, Schmid could tell something was wrong and told him so: “You’re not having any fun out there. I haven’t seen you smile on the field in a long time.”
“It was true,” Morris recalled. “I wasn’t really looking forward to games or training. I was always nervous, not wanting to make mistakes. Once I was able to get rid of that negative energy, a lot of that switched. And a lot of that came out of the first goal.”
That first MLS goal came in the 71st minute of a 2-1 win over Philadelphia on April 17 at CenturyLink Field. That opened the floodgates. Morris would score in the next three matches, too.
But when U.S. men’s national team coach Jurgen Klinsmann announced his final roster for the Copa America Centenario, Morris’s name was conspicuously absent. Morris put on a brave face. And when Seattle hosted the quarterfinal match between the USMNT and Ecuador last June, he and Sounders teammate Cristian Roldan helped lead local fans in a march to the stadium.
Inwardly, though, Morris burned.
“When he didn’t get selected for Copa America, I thought that kind of served him well,” Roldan said. “I thought there was a little shift in personality. It drove him. He was bummed that he didn’t make the team, but he wanted to show the nation that he was capable of being there. I think he definitely showed that.”
Morris agreed. “It added a little fuel to my fire to try to get back [to the national team]. … The rest of the season, that was kind of in the back of my mind,” he said.
Dempsey, who does not give out praise lightly, lauded Morris’ development into a more complete player after the Stanford product dished out a pair of assists in a 3-1 win at Orlando in August that many Sounders pinpointed as a turning point. Morris almost singlehandedly powered Seattle to a 4-2 win at Los Angeles a month later.
He scored in both legs of the Western Conference finals against Colorado, the latter of which came against the run of play when the Rapids were pushing hard for a goal that would have changed the series. A few weeks later, he paraded the MLS Cup trophy through the streets of his hometown.
All of it culminated in a return to the USMNT for its January camp, Morris’s first under new coach Bruce Arena.
“That was probably the most comfortable I’ve felt in a camp since I started playing for the national team,” Morris said.
He’s a regular now, no longer the college kid in awe of his surroundings. And his confidence is high following a successful first MLS season, which was spent proving himself against many of the guys he lines up beside for the national team.
For his sophomore Sounders campaign, Morris’ goals are more modest. His finishing still leaves something to be desired, he admits, and he needs to improve his hold-up play as the lone striker in Seattle’s 4-2-3-1 formation. But now that he’s free of outsized expectation, he can enjoy the simple focus of just getting better every day.
Finally, Jordan Morris can just play.
Matt Pentz covers Major League Soccer for FC Yahoo. Follow him on Twitter @mattpentz.
