If Andrea Pirlo truly has awoken, the Seattle Sounders face a vastly different NYCFC side than the one they last faced more than a year ago.
It’s been a month since the Sounders played at home, and it’s been nearly 14 since they last faced the league’s freshest expansion side in NYCFC. Back then, the Bronx-based newcomers were struggling through a rugged opening season that witnessed the gutting of the sideline staff and a full offseason with the aged Designated Player core of David Villa, Frank Lampard and Pirlo.
But in the end Pirlo is the Neo of this team, The One who would bind them together and make them sing. And at times this season he’s shown flashes of the form that once made him the most sought-after midfielder in the world.
Villa has been the constant in the eye of the storm, producing prolific stints of scoring genius even while Lampard failed to get on the field due to injury over the first four months of the 2016 season. In the meantime, the moneyed NYCFC has had to rely on secondary talents to become its heavy lifters this season, names like McNamara and Matarrita and even Diskerud.
When all three DPs scored in NYCFC’s rollicking 3-2 win over the Philadelphia Union last week, it wasn’t just the first time that had happened since the three joined forces last year. It was the team’s first win overall since May 15.
When Seattle welcomes NYCFC to CenturyLink Field on Saturday, they do so licking a few wounds of their own. The Sounders have won just one match in their last five, a 2-0 win over D.C. United surrounded by losses to FC Dallas, the Colorado Rapids, the New England Revolution and most recently a 2-0 loss to the New York Red Bulls last weekend.
The catch is that only one of those matches came at home, and in that sense Seattle is about to enter a decidedly more docile patch of games. Three of the Sounders’ next four are in the friendly confines of CenturyLink Field, and that starts here with NYCFC. Needless to say, matches in the heat of summer have never been more important, especially considering the Sounders currently sit in ninth place in the Western Conference.
Since the Sounders last saw this team, Kreis was replaced by the idealistic Patrick Vieira, who’s instituted a number of tactical reforms that have, at times, unlocked this team to play some truly intriguing attacking soccer. And at the center of that reform? Andrea Pirlo.
Pirlo was almost an afterthought in Kreis’ attacking setup last year, relegated to third and sometimes fourth ball status in the build as a midfielder routinely pushed to the side in the construct of the match. He didn’t have all that many touches in an average match, and while he was clearly still Pirlo, he was rarely all that dangerous. Kreis’ 4-4-2 diamond, in truth, didn’t really suit him.
Pirlo’s different this year, and he’s taken the customary first-DP-offseason to adjust and become one of the most dangerous setup men in the league in short order. Here’s a look at Pirlo’s most recent afternoon in the aforementioned Union match:
Pirlo characteristically sagged back in the midfield to spray those diamond-cutter diagonals, drifting center-left to provide support for an attack that’s suddenly become one of the league’s most dangerous. As for that soccer ball near the Union box? That was a trademark Pirlo free kick, his first goal in MLS and a sure sign that he’s in as good of form as he’s been in in MLS.
The problem, of course, for NYCFC is that Pirlo doesn’t track runners. NYCFC has surrendered 31 goals so far this season, the worst total in MLS by a clear four goals. Pirlo has certainly played his part in that as a boutique player at this point in his career. While he’s certainly as useful in the attack as most any withdrawn creator in the league, he won’t give you much defensively.
And that could be just the salve the Sounders need. For all its defensive steel so far this season - Seattle’s 17 goals allowed is second-best in the entire league - the attack is still flailing. Seattle has to find a way to score more goals, as its 13 is now the worst total in the league, now surpassed by the Eastern Conference bottom-feeding Chicago Fire.
The fact that Clint Dempsey will miss another match thanks to a third-place game the U.S. men’s national team must play in the Copa America won’t help matters either. So the Sounders will have to figure out a way to bring together an attacking combination Seattle coach Sigi Schmid has been experimenting with all year. With help in the transfer window seemingly still at arm’s length until later this summer, they’ll have to ask more out of the current crop, men across the front line like Jordan Morris, Aaron Kovar and Herculez Gomez.
Because the time is now to make a move up the standings table. Only an in-form Pirlo and his NYCFC comrades stand in the way.
