Well, it’s time for another Whitecaps game! They’re coming thick and fast at this point and I for one don’t really feel emotionally ready to absorb another game so quickly on the heels of a difficult game away to Colorado. But the MLS schedule neither stands still nor reverses. It simply marches forward. 

Seattle Sounders:

The Seattle Sounders, by most statistical measures, are a pretty decent team. They sit fourth in the West by expected goal difference per game. They even have some decent recent form at their backs, with two wins and a draw in their last 5. But there is another more intangible thing about the Sounders that might have a greater impact. Their vibes are bad! Not so much in the sense that the players are on the verge of fighting each other but there is a sense that the team is a bit of a zombie.

Seattle, on paper, does not have that old of a squad but they are still starting a lot of the same players they were starting as they did 5 years ago. They only have two players under the age of 25 who have played at least 50% of the available minutes and they rely heavily on a number of players well into their 30s. Even head coach Brian Schmetzer has acknowledged this in an interview with the MLS website. 

“Certainly, there’s been conversations about the team, and maybe myself – maybe that’s past the prime date…”

Now, Schmetzer was not affirming that the Sounders have passed it but it never seems like a good thing when the coach is acknowledging “conversations about the team” publicly.

Seattle has also struggled with injuries quite a bit. Josh Atencio and Leo Chu headline the players who are definitively ruled out for this encounter. But recently signed DP Pedro De La Vega and regular centre-back Yeimar are also listed as “questionable.” 

At the end of the day, the smart money is probably still on the Sounders. The smart money is on the home team in almost every MLS game and the Sounders are not nearly bad enough to break that paradigm. But I do see a brittleness that the Whitecaps could capitalize on. 

Vancouver Whitecaps:

The Whitecaps are coming off a road game against the Colorado Rapids in which they were doing reasonably well but had everything derailed by a Bjorn Utvik red card shortly before halftime.

The Whitecaps are in the midst of a very difficult period of their schedule. They have a lot of road games scheduled very tightly together (plus their next home game is against Inter Miami who basically have a cheat code in Messi). The depth of the squad has also been severely tested, especially in the forward positions, as an injury to Damir Kreilach has meant Levonte Johnson is the only forward player who can truly be rotated in (and you probably wouldn’t want to start Kreilach in any case). So, while the Whitecaps have few injuries, it will be interesting to see what level of energy they are able to produce.