TUKWILA, Wash. – Despite a pair of costly lapses in the span of five minutes in the Seattle Sounders’ loss to Club America earlier this week, captain and center back Brad Evans insists there are no crippling concerns about the back line heading into the team’s MLS regular season opener this weekend.
The Sounders coughed up a 1-0 lead in the second leg of the Scotiabank CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinals on Wednesday, allowing a pair of goals right before halftime en route to an eventual 3-1 loss. Club America was able to overcome three different deficits over the two-game series, leading to some concerns that the back line wasn’t quite in cohesion after a preseason that saw Evans fellow veteran Chad Marshall pair together only sparingly due to Evans’ nagging hamstring injury suffered in January.
“Chad and I … we don’t feel like we played bad defensively,” Evans said following the team’s training session on Friday. “We don’t feel like we gave away any really soft goals. All their goals were very well taken. I guess we could talk about closing guys down and blocked crosses, but at the same time, we cleared out 20 crosses in the second half. Three of them came through, and unfortunately they came out with goals.”
Part of that is because of Club America’s stellar front line – there’s arguably no pairing in MLS that matches the duo of Darwin Quintero and Oribe Peralta, who combined for four of the team’s five goals in the series – and part was due to the stellar play of midfielder Rubens Sambueza, who assisted on all four of those goals.
The Sounders simply won’t see anyone at that level when they host the season opener against Sporting Kansas City on Sunday (4 p.m. PT; FS1/KIRO 97.3 FM/ El Rey 1360 AM), and Evans said there were some encouraging moments from the two games played against one of North America’s best teams.
“We’re disappointed, 100 percent. We left a lot on the field … but coming into the locker room today, guys were ready to work and bust it,” Evans said. “We’re ready to get our feet wet again.”
