archived posts
Stromson — Seattle Sounders: July pillaging
Hello all, and welcome back to another update of our Seattle Sounders story! It’s been a turbulent 24 hours for our community, but we have to pick ourselves up and forge ahead with the game and stories we love! Many of you showed a great deal of support for Johnny and Darren yesterday, and while I’m new to the writing staff, it was encouraging to see such an outpouring. I’ll step off my soapbox now; let’s get down to what was a very, very interesting month of July.
Results:
First things first really, how we actually fared results wise! July is probably our toughest single month of football, and we were to face Los Angeles, FC Dallas, D.C. United, and Colorado, all of whom are quite talented teams. We’d thus far swept LA, United, and Colorado, but FC Dallas handed us our most recent loss way back in April. Considering our slump in form toward the end of June, I was genuinely worried that we’d be dropping points somewhere down this stretch.
Wow, three of our toughest matches and three of our best results! Once again, Los Angeles was dealing with several injuries and David Beckham was for some reason ineligible, and so the match was easier than it probably would’ve been (I’d really love to play a full strength LA side). I’d like you to take a look at the highlight video, and pay especially close attention to the final goal:
Seattle Sounders FC vs Los Angeles Galaxy
Following LA, we found ourselves up against Dallas. I was worried about this game, and Dallas is a strong squad with an excellent defense. They’d shut us down once before, but I was hoping our home field advantage would give us the edge we needed. The match was going brilliantly until the 63rd minute, when I received the worst possible notification that someone could receive:
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!
My heart quite literally plummeted at the sight of that news. Fredy Montero IS my team, and without him I’m convinced we don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of winning any hardware. I nervously rocked back and forth in my chair as we closed out the 2-0 win, and was terrified of clicking on my inbox. Was it a broken leg? Crap, he’d be done for the year if it was. Maybe he only sprained something, that would just be a few weeks. A blown knee? He’d never be the same player again. With one eye closed, I clicked the physio’s report:
Oh my goodness…
It took me about 15 seconds for me to comprehend what I was reading before a wave of combined relief and euphoria swept through me. Only three or four days! He’d miss the next game, but that was it! We’d had a very, very close call, and the tension was palpable as we awaited those medical results. Mercifully, life at the club will go on! My lads responded brilliantly in our first Montero-less match of the season against DC United, and my backup striker (35 year old Blaise Nkufo) made the most of his chance in scoring a brace alongside my current AML Danny Earls (more on that later).
Following the United game, we had a 10 day break before hosting the Colorado Rapids. We’d already beaten them twice in Colorado, and I was comfortably confident heading into our home game with them. Fredy Montero was back for this match, and the squad was rejuvenated after our break (the Rapids had only four days rest):
Yikes! That’s not exactly how it was supposed to pan out! Despite our greater shot total and higher possession time, Colorado was in control of the match from the opening whistle (their first shot on goal being registered 36 seconds into the match). We looked sluggish and complacent, and I could immediately tell the squad simply didn’t have any motivation for this match. Only a little bit of Montero magic prevented us from being shut out in this very once sided affair.
To close out the month of July, we had our Heritage Cup Derby match against San Jose. This Cup is played for by MLS teams who bear the same name as their NASL predecessors; currently only San Jose and Seattle participate, so it’s little more than a fancy trophy for a regular league game. San Jose isn’t the strongest of teams, and they’re currently sitting 7th in the Western Conference:
That pretty much was that. The game was actually a great deal closer than the final scoreline would reveal, but San Jose had no answer for Fredy Montero as he put away his first hat trick of the year. An ugly header by Jeff Parke in the waning seconds put the cherry on top of our Heritage Cup win!
Other News:
You perhaps might be wondering why this post is titled «July pillaging». In actuality, it has nothing to do with our results, but everything to do with me feeling like a small English village during a Viking raid. Since the start of the June transfer window, the large European clubs have been attempting to plunder me of all my talent (with a fair degree of success). If pictures are worth a thousand words (yay, cliche!), take a look at the following:
Closing Thoughts/Full Disclosure Part 2
You’ll recall in my last post that I mentioned I have been using FMRTE as a way of viewing a players true CA/PA, and for some limited scouting work when I felt like circumventing the «Player Attribute Masking» rule. I’ve always viewed the application as a relatively harmless tool (though I was aware of its cheating potential), but after recent events, I’ve decided the best course of action would be to simply uninstall it and never look back. With this being the age of the super shady internet folk, I decided to go ahead and put this little video together (also, I really wanted to make a video):
That’ll do it for this update! Next time out we’ll take a look at our August (and probably September) results, along with our success (or lack thereof) in the NACL! On a semi-related noted, do you guys have any interest in regular YouTube videos? I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a video summary (or even a live commentary) along with my written narrative, and am curious if there is any demand. Thanks for reading all, much love!