Get ready to see plenty of Sounders FC this spring. And if things go well, plenty of them in November too.
The Major League Soccer schedule drop Thursday will be met with the typical round of fixture gazing from fans and front offices alike across the league. Each season is filled with the requisite peaks and troughs that accompany a 34-game schedule spread across the most travel-heavy domestic league in the world. MLS is hard on luggage that way.
But the Sounders in particular are one of the clubs most interested in those travel arrangements. Given the city’s geographic location on the edge of the MLS map, East Coast swings are that much tougher, and anything outside matches against Cascadia teams or the league's two California teams requires travel to a different time zone.
The good news in Seattle’s 2016 schedule, fortunately, is that the team has plenty of opportunities to dig in over the first three months of the season.
Of the Sounders’ 12 games in the months of March, April and May, seven are in the friendly confines of CenturyLink Field. That includes a blessed spell of months in which Seattle never has to play two consecutive games away from home. Every tough road trip is cut with at least one following game at home.
Trek to Real Salt Lake on March 12? Seattle chases it with consecutive games at home against Vancouver Whitecaps FC and the Montreal Impact. Trips to Houston (April 10) and Colorado (April 23) sandwich a home game against the Philadelphia Union (April 16). A jaunt to face the Rapids on April 23 is followed up by a pair of home games against Columbus Crew SC and the San Jose Earthquakes. Further, half of those 12 games are against teams that didn’t make the playoffs in 2015. Seattle faces Colorado, the Western Conference’s last-place team in 2015, twice in that span.
Then, however, things get a bit stickier.
While the first couple months should be kind to Seattle, it could get rocky on May 28. That’s when the Sounders embark on a three-game East Coast swing from New England to D.C. United to the New York Red Bulls. The Sounders have a scant four-day gap between the Revolution and D.C. United games, but a 19-day break in MLS action from June 1 to June 19 allows the team to rest up before returning to the East Coast to battle the defending Supporters’ Shield champs at Red Bull Arena. Still, winning at RBA against arguably the league's best team last year is no easy feat, regardless of rest.
The summer won’t be done with Seattle yet. This is one of those odd years where Seattle has to play the Portland Timbers away twice, and all three of the teams’ MLS matches are sandwiched into a six-week window in July and August. The first Timbers-Sounders game on July 17 at Providence Park opens up a difficult stretch of six away games in nine through the beginning of September. That includes a brutal cross-country trip to Orlando on Aug. 7 - one of the longest road trips for any team in MLS all year - and a three-game road swing to Houston (Aug. 24), Portland (Aug. 28) and then San Jose (Sept. 10).
If Seattle can make it through that stretch - easily the most difficult nine-game run of the season - they’ll be set up nicely for the final seven-game push to the postseason.
The Sounders finish the season with alternating home-and-away matches over the final six weeks of the season. That in itself isn’t bad news and there some very winnable games there for the taking during that stretch, but the difficult bit are the away matches. Seattle has to play the LA Galaxy, Whitecaps and FC Dallas away from home from Sept. 25 until the end. The good news - and there is plenty in this schedule - is that those matches are cut with winnable home games against the Chicago Fire, Houston Dynamo and Real Salt Lake.
Last season, the perfect storm broadsided the Sounders when an injury crisis hit just as the season’s most difficult stretch during the summer shifted into full gear. Undoubtedly wizened by that experience, they’ll see some echoes of that misery in this schedule. Seattle could well come out of the first three months of the season sitting pretty - just as they did in 2015 - only to find the sledding particularly tougher in July through August.
But you can’t plan for that many injuries, and Seattle still managed to finish strong and came within penalties of advancing to the Western Conference Championship. If the Sounders can avoid a summer swoon this year to head into the back stretch with even more momentum than they had in 2015, this could well be a year worth remembering.
