During the recent Sounders scoring draught, it isn't unreasonable to look to the guy who led the team in goals for three of their four years. FREDY... Montero. Would this team's terrible luck tickling the back of the net continue with Montero up top? Possibly. He has scored only three goals in his nine starts with Millionarios, and didn't get on the board in their most recent match against Santa Fe.
The Seattle Sounders Women will once again be wearing the X-Box Rave Green. There are some familiar faces on the roster, if you followed the team last season. Lindsay Elston will once again be in the midfield, Annie Sittauer will be on the back line and Allie Beahan will be racing in the front. Isabel Farrell is on the team, but unavailable to play today, as are Rachel Mercik and Shannon Woeller due to NCAA rules.
Professional women's soccer finally arrives in Seattle, by way of Chicago.
SEATTLE - For the first time in a while, Seattle Sounders FC dominated a game on Saturday in the 0-0 tie against the New England Revolution.
Both teams played a 4-4-2 hybrid formation that often looked like a 4-2-3-1. Deep-lying central midfielders disrupted play through the middle on both ends, making flank play the key to success for both teams.
The Sounders dominated every aspect of the game to a rather absurd degree not to come away with a victory.
Jurgen Klinsmann was in Seattle to check out the training facilities, talk to Sigi, look at two of his players (they're injured) and get a feel for the game experience here. At half time he spoke to the media. There were not many surprises. Seattle gets to see the United States in World Cup Qualifying because the organization here is willing to lay temporary sod.
In a result that can only be considered failure the Seattle Sounders drew the New England Revolution at home. The zero-zero result does not do the performance justice, nor does the single point in the table represent the match. Two months into the league play and Seattle can not manage a win despite the favorable schedule.
The primary non-game related storylines are that Shalrie Joseph is facing the team with which he was one of the best midfielders to take the pitch in MLS. This is also the first match that Kevin Alston will miss while he steps aside and receives treatment for cancer. That is a much bigger tale than soccer.
Shifting Steve Zakuani to the forward was a major topic of conversation this week both online and at practice. This also lead into Sigi Schmid talking about how part of the shift was due to the way that Seattle needed to defend Santos Laguna. It was a similar structure to what was used to chase the second half of the Salt Lake match and most of leg one's loss to Santos at home.
Sigi said it best when he mentioned that even with a win Saturday, Seattle will still be clinging to last place in MLS. There's no better reason for an orthodox Sounder to check out some of the other games around the league. Though some of the games on the slate may make those irritated with our team's slow start even more frustrated.
It's easy to become accustomed to success. It's easy for a fan base to become complacent. It's a soothing story to tell yourself that your favored franchise is just intrinsically better than those others, entitled to competitive seasons year after year while other teams languish. That even if the biggest prize of a Championship never comes, your team is guaranteed to at least be in the hunt every season.
Seattle Reign owner Bill Predmore once told me that the inability to make professional women's soccer viable was a simple accounting problem. Figure out the numbers, he said, and there's no reason it couldn't work.
Just days before the start of their inaugural season, Predmore now admits this undertaking was a little more daunting than he originally thought.
The Sounders' pursuit of a CONCACAF Champions League title will have to wait until 2015, at the earliest. That's a rather bitter pill to swallow, and is not made much easier by the fact that the Sounders came within a goal of advancing to the final.
The silver lining of the elimination comes in the way the Sounders were eliminated.
It is a basement battle as the Eastern Conference bottom fish travel west to take in their rare visit to CenturyLink Field. The 1 PM match is on KONG 6/16 ((KIRO FM radio) as well as usual Spanish language TV and Radio. Enjoy the last home game for nearly a month as Shalrie Joseph plays against his old side.
As the Seattle Sounders sit with zero points they get their best opportunity for a win when they take on the New England Revolution, another team struggling as the season begins. Amid injuries and fitness the lineup for Seattle is in question. This is also true for the Revolution, but they have the biggest "injury of all.
