Jon: Seattle Sounders Season 1 — Preseason

Hello all, and welcome back to the first true update to our Seattle Sounders story! I apologize for taking a full weekend for getting this up, but between packing up for a move and trying to decipher the inner workings of the MLS’ confounding roster system (you’d think practically growing up with this league would help, but I assure you it didn’t), I haven’t been able to get a worthy post ready. That all changes now, of course, so let’s take a look at how things are shaping up this season.

Roster Moves:

As I mentioned, the MLS roster system is…different. For starters, because players are contracted to the league and not your team, there is functionally no such thing as a «free transfer». You have three options: trade or sell the player (but you can’t «offer to clubs» in game, you just have to hope someone likes your guy enough to make an offer), waive the player (which you can only do after the waiver draft), and mutual termination (which they almost never agree to). This made clearing out some of the deadwood rather a rather odious endeavor. Mercifully, Seattle already possesses an impressively strong roster, and I focused instead on bringing in a few backup players:

I brought Srebrenko in on a free transfer after he’s spent the majority of his career with Slaven Belupo in Croatia. His talent level is roughly on par with the rest of my midfield, and I’ll be using him quite a bit.

I managed to lure Wayne Rooney’s younger brother across the pond, and while he has nowhere near the talent of his brother, he is more than capable of succeeding in the MLS. I’ll be using him primarily as a sub and the occasional starter when playing against weak teams. I may look to send him out on loan to help further develop his skills.

A reasonably talented youngster with truckloads of potential. He’s unlikely to see much first team action this season, but I’m attempting to arrange a loan so he can pick up some much needed experience.

Here is our overall transfer activity (not much to speak of really):

Starting Eleven:

And now please allow me the honor of presenting you with our starting eleven for the 2010 season (hint: nearly all of them were already here):

Goalkeeper:

An American soccer legend, Kasey Keller also happens to be the best keeper on the squad by a country mile. Given his age, I expect him to retire in the nearish future, so I’ll be on the lookout for a talented replacement/backup.

Fullbacks:

A very solid leftback, he’s more or less capped out his potential but I still expect see him shutdown the left side of the pitch.

Another incumbent, he isn’t the most talented player on the pitch but he was the best available (and frankly, sometimes that has to do).

Centrebacks (I spelled it British for you):

A reasonably skilled centerback, I picked Jeff up on a free (which didn’t show up in the transfer history for some reason) after he’d been out of football for two years (his most recent stint being a 2004-2008 run with New York). He’s pretty experienced, and I hope he takes advantage of the opportunity he’s been given.

Another incumbent, Tyson is here primarily as a long-term sub. Seattle’s star defender is out for 14 months with a knee injury, and Tyson is filling in. Not exceedingly talented, but better than anything I could find on the waiver market.

Midfielders:

A rather talented young Swede with another half star of potential in the tank. He’ll be one of my primary midfielders going foward, though I do have some concerns about his fitness and strength.

You’ve already met this guy, and he’ll be one of my starting midfielders going into the season (following an impressive friendly campaign).

Not the strongest squad in the world, but a decent setup for the MLS (only New York and Los Angeles are appreciably better than us), and so we should be able to achieve our objective of challenging for the MLS Cup title. I’m fairly concerned about my defense, and our wingers need a bit of work, but I’m hoping a strong midfield and the prowess of Montero will carry us in the meantime.

Friendlies:

I scheduled quite a few friendlies in order to get the squad back in shape/see what I had available (oh yeah, and the money). All in all, I think the results were decent:

A 5-2-2 preseason record; I’ll take that! I was proud of our lads for standing up to Schalke and pulling in a respectable result, and we actually outplayed Lorraine in our 0-0 draw. More importantly, we only conceded 5 goals in nine games, and all 5 were in our two defeats! This helped me gain some confidence in our back four, and I was optimistic heading into the regular season!

MLS Regular Season (April):

The time was upon us! After a long preseason of learning rules, building the squad, and preparing tactics, we were finally ready to begin our season campaign. Our first month was jam-packed with fixtures, and I knew it was going to be tough to come away with all the results we needed. Let’s see how we did:

What the hell happened to our defense!? TWELVE goals conceded in our first six games, TWELVE! I was absolutely livid. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled we’re 3-2-1 (and sitting second place in the Western Conference), but being a defensive-minded manager, no part of me is/was okay with conceding that many goals. Mercifully our wingers and Mr. Montero have been absolutely brilliant, and have saved us from some pretty embarrassing results. We currently have the dubious honor of being the team with both the most goals scored (16) and the most goals allowed (12). Needless to say, I’m going to be looking to make some serious changes on defense. Only Kasey Keller (who is the only reason we haven’t allowed 20+ goals) is guaranteed his job at this point.

Unfortunately our schedule remains fairly congested (and will be even more so if we beat New England to qualify for the US Cup), so I’ll need to be careful about not shaking things up too dramatically. I know I should be happy with our relatively positive results, but until I start to see some clean sheets I simply won’t be satisfied with our performances.

Closing:

As always, I’ll leave you with the most absurd thing to happen in this save to date:

Thanks for reading everyone! I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback!