For only the second time in the last 31 matches, the Seattle Sounders will face a team from Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference when they welcome Atlanta United to Lumen Field on Sunday (1:30 p.m. PT; FOX, 950 KJR AM, El Rey 1360 AM | TICKETS).
Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, teams in MLS largely played within their own conference last season in order to reduce the amount of travel. Seattle fell to Columbus Crew SC in last year’s MLS Cup Final, but before then, the last team the Sounders faced from the East was the Chicago Fire in July at the MLS is Back tournament in Florida.
The Sounders’ players and coaches have grown accustomed to seeing the same familiar faces repeatedly — in the last 31 matches, Seattle played LAFC seven times and the Portland Timbers five — so Sunday’s match offers a chance to test themselves against a completely different team.
“I wouldn’t say there’s a tangible difference between Eastern Conference and Western Conference,” said Head Coach Brian Schmetzer on Friday. “What I would say is that each team within each conference has a distinct style. So, we as a coaching staff were excited to get a new opponent.”
Seattle hasn’t seen Atlanta United in almost two full calendar years, last playing the Five Stripes on July 14, 2019, in a 2-1 Sounders win at Lumen Field. A lot has changed since then, most notably a new head coach in Atlanta in Gabriel Heinze. The former Argentine international spent his playing career plying his trade for some of the biggest names in world football in Paris Saint-German, Manchester United and Real Madrid.
“That’s an interesting hire,” said Schmetzer. “I actually went and watched his clips, his highlights of when he was a player. He was a hard-nosed player. When you study film, you study your opponent, you do a little background check into who’s coaching the team because a lot of times the personality of the coach comes through the team.”
Atlanta United came into MLS in 2017 with ambition and success the league hadn’t seem from an expansion team since the Sounders entered in 2009. Atlanta won MLS Cup in 2018 in just its second season and routinely packs Mercedes-Benz Stadium with record numbers of fans. Just last week, Atlanta United had 40,000 spectators, the most for a soccer match anywhere in the world since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m not so sure we measure ourselves against Atlanta, but there sure are a ton of comparisons,” said Schmetzer. “They’re a tremendous franchise. We’re a tremendous franchise. They want to win. We want to win. They’ve got great players. We’ve got great players. There’s a lot of similarities there.”
One of Atlanta’s biggest reasons for its success has been the play of forward Josef Martínez, who has proved himself to be arguably the most prolific goalscoring threat in league history. He has 78 goals in 89 career matches, but he is still working his way back to full fitness after tearing his ACL in the first match of 2020. Stopping him will be the main defensive priority for the Sounders, who have conceded just twice in their opening six matches, including an astounding zero from open play.
“We have a very good number of players in defense, players with great capacity to adapt to the formation that our coach has established for this year,” said defender Xavier Arreaga. “We’ve set in our minds to be a team that is very hard to beat.”
Seattle sits atop the Supporters’ Shield standings heading into the weekend with 16 points from 18 on offer, and Schmetzer knows that the Sounders will be getting teams’ best shot every match.
“Other teams are coming after us because we’ve started off well,” Schmetzer said. “We’re not taking Atlanta lightly.
“We’re at home,” he continued. “My expectation for this game is the same, where we go out and we try and dictate tempo to them. We want to be on the front foot. We want to make sure that they understand that this is our home and there’s a noticeable home field advantage in MLS.”
