Frei injury mars Sounders-Crew draw

Seattle Sounders 1-1 Columbus Crew

SEATTLE, WA–The entirety of Sunday’s match at Lumen Field–a 1-1 draw in the end–became the secondary story. Right towards the end of the match, while challenging for a ball off a Diego Rossi free kick, Sounders goalkeeper Stefan Frei’s head collided with the knee of Amar Sejdic.

Frei would go down in a heap and players from both sides immediately called for the trainers. Frei would be down for several minutes and the match was effectively ended there at the request of Columbus coach Wilfried Nancy to referee Ismir Pekmic instead of continuing the match with a corner kick. Frei would leave the match in an ambulance and taken to the hospital for further evaluation. At the time of this post, there was no further word on Frei’s condition.

Sounders defender Alex Roldan is in distress after goalkeeper Stefan Frei went down with a serious injury after colliding with the Crew’s Amar Sejdic (Photo: Nate Koppelman)

“[Stef] was alert when he was loaded up onto the ambulance,” said Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer. “His fingers were moving, so he was OK in that regard. No paralysis, no nothing major, but I don’t want to downplay it. I’m very happy for our medical staff because they did a good job to be careful. We can’t underestimate that type of stuff.”

Photo: Paul Kahl

Rossi opened the scoring for the Crew in the 27th minute following a thru-ball from Ibrahim Aliyu. Paul Rothrock equalized for the Sounders following a thru-ball from Kalani Kosta-Rienzi . The Sounders would finish with ten men in stoppage time after Kosta-Rienzi picked up a second yellow card.

However, all the focus was and is presently on Stefan Frei, who earlier in the first half recorded his 1,000th regular season save and is second all time in Major League Soccer behind Nick Rimando’s 1,128.

“Seeing him on the ground is very emotional because he gives so much to the squad,” said Sounders midfielder Cristian Roldan, who was on the field helping to defend the free kick. “Having gone through something of that magnitude [a concussion in 2023], it brings back some of those core, difficult memories. To see Stef, who’s always so happy, like that is tough. Support is going to be the most important thing for him.”

The Sounders’ next match is Saturday at Sporting Kansas City (5:30pm PT, Apple TV) while Columbus play at FC Cincinnati on Saturday (7:30pm ET, Apple TV).

Get well soon, Stefan!

Photos by Paul Kahl and Nate Koppelman

(Editor’s Note: At our discretion, we have decided not to include photos featuring Stefan Frei’s injury as part of this match story. Photos are included in the linked galleries, but viewer discretion is advised.)

(Editor’s Note #2: An earlier version of this post had inadvertently attributed a photo to Paul Kahl and hyperlinked the wrong gallery to his name. Both of those errors have been corrected and apologies for those errors.)