ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) \u2014 Dayne St. Clair scored and Andrew Thomas hit the crossbar in a penalty-kick shootout that was decided by the goalkeepers in the 11th round, and Minnesota United staged a short-handed rally to beat the Seattle Sounders on Saturday in the rubber match of the best-of-three first-round series for the MLS Cup after a 3-3 tie in regulation.<\/p>\n
Thomas, who replaced starter Stefan Frei in the 89th minute with a shootout looming, appeared to injure a finger on a miss by Joaqu\u00edn Pereyra to begin the shootout. He finished with a heavily-taped hand.<\/p>\n
The fifth-seeded Sounders got off to an even faster start in the rubber match than they did in a 4-2 victory at home \u2014 when Obed Vargas scored in the 8th minute to give them a lead they never relinquished on Monday.<\/p>\n
This time Albert Rusn\u00e1k used assists from Danny Musovski and defender Nouhou Tolo to score in the 5th minute for a 1-0 lead. Musovski scored unassisted from the center of the box three minutes later for a two-goal lead. <\/p>\n
Minnesota United cut it to 2-1 in the 19th minute when Pereyra scored off a set piece after a yellow card on Seattle\u2019s Y\u00e9imar G\u00f3mez Andrade. It was Pereyra\u2019s first goal in his sixth postseason appearance.<\/p>\n
The fourth-seeded Loons were forced to play a man down from the 41st minute on after defender Joseph Rosales was tagged with a red card for violent conduct. <\/p>\n
Minnesota United took a 3-2 lead on short-handed goals by Jefferson Diaz in the 62nd minute and fellow defender Anthony Markanich in the 71st. Markanich subbed into the match in the 59th minute before scoring off a set piece.<\/p>\n
Seattle failed to take advantage with an extra man until Jordan Morris scored in the 88th minute to tie it. Rusn\u00e1k and Cristian Rold\u00e1n had assists.<\/p>\n
Stefan Frei finished with two saves for the Sounders.<\/p>\n
St. Clair turned away five shots for Minnesota United, which advances to the Western Conference semifinals for the third time in club history.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP soccer: https:\/\/apnews.com\/soccer<\/p>\n
The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) \u2014 Dayne St. Clair scored and Andrew Thomas hit the crossbar in a penalty-kick…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-271050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}