By Jason Davis – WASHINGTON, DC (Feb 16, 2022) US Soccer Players – Until a Major League Soccer team wins the modern version of the Concacaf Champions League, the safe assumption is that it’s a goal for the league. The continent’s top honor is important, with the safe assumption that every participant would like to win. Actually doing that is the difference for MLS clubs. It’s what produces the standard response to any MLS participant stressing how important the competition is for them.
Experience certainly should count. Some MLS teams have plenty, the result of qualifying through domestic league finish or the US Open Cup. Both of those routes mean winning, stressing the point of what it will eventually take to lift Concacaf’s trophy. A few clubs are consistently in the mix and have the resources to finally break the Liga MX hold on the Champions League. One of them is the Seattle Sounders.
No team is more consistently competitive for MLS championships than the Sounders. While no one in Seattle takes that consistency as a given season after season, it allows the club to look beyond a domestic championship. As a result, the eye-rolls and dismissive comments are just a little less intense when it’s the Sounders that are talking about going for the crown.
Seattle arrives at the Champions League round of 16 after a disappointing 2021 season. The Sounders looked like the Western Conference’s best team for most of the season, starting with a 13-game unbeaten run and leading the conference for most of the campaign. A slip on Decision Day dropped the Sounders to 2nd-place in the West, forcing the club into a first-round playoff matchup against Real Salt Lake at Lumen Field.
RSL sprung one of those upsets unique to soccer. They locked down the Sounders over 120 minutes without registering a single shot on target before advancing in the shootout. There’s certainly some blame to go around for how Seattle’s season ended, but there’s also an element of “stuff happens” to that kind of knockout playoff loss.
The margins are already slim enough in MLS. The league’s turn to one-off games only exacerbates the random nature of the playoffs.
It’s easy to forget that the Sounder navigated much of 2021 with several first-choice players missing large parts of the season. Any list of notable absences from Seattle’s campaign last year has to begin with forward Jordan Morris. Morris missed all but the final few matches of the year, with his first start not coming until the playoff loss to RSL. Nico Lodeiro played nine regular-season games and made only a short substitute appearance in the playoffs. Starting goalkeeper Stefan Frei played only 17 games due to a knee injury that led to blood clot complications.
Plenty MLS teams would have found those setbacks devastating. For the Sounders, they were limiting factors that didn’t disrupt their path to the postseason.
Getting Morris back, healthy and ready to contribute, is a massive boost to the club’s chances for one or more trophies this year. A fit Lodeiro is among the best players in the league and potentially takes the club from good to great. Roldan and the club’s other internationals won’t have a summer interruption of the same scales this season.
Head coach Brian Schmetzer gets those players back in the fold for the new season. He also gets the league’s deepest roster to go with them.
The Sounders have depth at every position, a luxury built last year to deal with their injury issues. The club also got stronger, particularly with the addition of playmaker Albert Rusnak from Real Salt Lake. Rusnak’s signing rates as the biggest free agent move in the relatively short history of the mechanism in MLS. Adding Rusnak to the group not only gives Schmetzer another weapon to deploy alongside Lodeiro, Morris, and striker Raul Ruidiaz, it provides cover.
Considering the rigors of the Champions League once the MLS season starts, it’s that sort of flexibility that puts Seattle in a position to make a run at the trophy. The Sounders’ Champions League quest isn’t without the usual MLS-specific complications. The tournament still begins before the start of the MLS season, meaning the Sounders’ first CCL match will also be their first match of 2022. That might not be all that daunting with the club’s first opponent is Honduran side Motagua, but the level of competition picks up quickly.
More than ever before, MLS clubs in the Champions League face the problem of bad timing. The Concacaf version of the most hallowed continental club tournament in the world suffers from mismatched league calendars. MLS is the outlier with a Spring-to-Fall schedule. It’s the American and Canadian teams that must dive into the competition cold.
The Sounders’ situation is exacerbated by the number of internationals on their roster. COVID-19 dramatically changed the World Cup qualifying process for Concacaf, thereby pulling Morris and Roldan away for USMNT duty in January and early February. Cameroon’s run in the Africa Cup of Nations prevented defender Nouhou Tolo from getting to camp on time. Visa issues complicated matters with some of the club’s other foreign players.
Seattle isn’t the type of club to focus on excuses. Instead, they’ll be the ones looking to do what so many MLS clubs have talked about before. Not just make the final and put on a good showing for the league, but this time to win the Concacaf Champions League.
Jason Davis is the founder of MatchFitUSA.com and the host of The United States of Soccer on SiriusXM. Contact him: matchfitusa@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter.
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Photo by Lyndsay Radnedge – ISIPhotos.com
