SEATTLE — Obafemi Martins let his scoring speak for him. On Saturday, it was a record-setting statement.
Martins scored his 14th and 15th goals of season to break the Seattle record in the Sounders’ 4-2 victory over Chivas USA.
Martins scored in the first half to tie it at 1, and gave Seattle a two-goal lead early in the second. He broke the team mark of 14 set by Eddie Johnson in 2012. Martins also assisted on Clint Dempsey’s goal that put the Sounders up 3-2 in first-half stoppage time.
“He’s able to be clinical on front of goal,” Dempsey said about Martins, who was long gone from the locker room by the time reporters came in afterward. “And he can create chances for other players. He’s good on the ball, and he can come into those pockets and get on the half turn. He also can run behind the defense with his pace.”
Sounders coach Sigi Schmid figures Martins is far from finished as the regular season heads into its final month and the playoffs loom.
“He’s still got more games to go, so it’s not the record yet,” Schmid said. “And Clint (with 13 goals) is right there close to him, as well. We’d like them both to get beyond what the old record was.”
“I think it shows that at the end of last year, Oba was just fatigued from not having gotten a break, going from the Russian season to the Spanish season to our season,” Schmid added. “Now that he had a proper preseason and got that break in between, he’s sustaining his effort and is sustaining it late in the season.”
The Sounders (18-9-3) snapped a two-game losing streak. With 57 points, they regained sole possession of first place in the West and in the race for the Supporters Shield ahead of Los Angeles. The Galaxy have 54 points and host New York on Sunday night.
With four games left, Seattle tied the franchise record for wins in a season. The 2011 team went 18-7-9.
A goal by Erick Torres — his club-record 15th — and a Seattle own goal, both during the first half, were not enough to prevent Chivas USA (6-18-6) from losing its seventh straight game. Its winless streak reached 12 at 0-11-1.
“It’s important that the players understand that the only way for us to get out of this slump is getting on the field and putting out intensity,” Chivas coach Wilmer Cabrera said. “We came with intensity, we played the top team in this league even, and we scored goals. But we have to improve the lack of concentration when we have to tackle the ball.”
Chivas USA, which hasn’t won since a 3-1 decision at Vancouver on July 12, opened the scoring at the outset of the 12th minute when Torres drove a 7-yard shot into a wide-open net.
Just more than two minutes later, Martins tied it, taking a pass from Marco Pappa. With two Chivas players on him, Martins launched a 27-yard shot from the left of the arc into far right corner, just beyond the reach of Chivas goalkeeper Dan Kennedy.
Chivas went on top 2-1 in the 18th minute with the own goal off Seattle’s Jalil Anibaba. Lamar Neagle tied it at 2 in the 37th minute with his eighth of the year.
The Sounders, who have come back to win six of the 14 games in which they’ve allowed the first goal, went ahead 40 seconds into first-half stoppage time when Dempsey’s 10-yard shot rolled slowly into the back right corner.
