The lineup sheet hit like an anvil falling from 40,000 feet.
The LA Galaxy game on July 31 marked the first time Nico Lodeiro was available for team selection for the Seattle Sounders, but few predicted he’d make the starting lineup. Lodeiro had arrived from Argentina just five days earlier, limiting his practice time and understanding with a raft of new teammates.
Surely Seattle’s newest Designated Player would need time to acclimate? He did not, it would seem.
Lodeiro didn’t come off the bench. He started, played all 90 minutes and marked one of the most memorable debuts in Sounders history. His 124 touches were the fourth-best total in MLS this season and the genuine danger he posed throughout the match gave the Sounders a lift in chance creation where previously there was a smoking crater.
We learned a few things from that performance. One of them was that Lodeiro is already 90 minutes fit. And that is not good news for Orlando City.
Seattle embarks on its longest road trip of the season this weekend when it faces Orlando City in Florida on Sunday (4 p.m. PM; FS1/KIRO 97.3 FM/EL Rey 1360 AM). And like Seattle, Orlando City has a new coach at the rudder who only has a single game of archived footage with his current roster to give us clues as to how this one might sway come game day. At least on the sidelines, Brian Schmetzer vs. Jason Kreis should be one of the more unpredictably volatile matchups of the MLS season.
On the field, though, the Sounders are caught somewhat between two realities.
On one hand, the postseason is a distant proposition at the moment. Anything can happen in MLS, which embodies the topsy-turvy emotion of soccer as well as any league in the world. But the hard, flinty reality is that Seattle is nine points out of the last playoff spot with just 13 games to make up the difference. They’ll probably have to win at least 60 percent of those games in order to even have a shot.
On the other, the Sounders have been noticeably buoyed by the midseason acquisition of attacking midfielders Lodeiro and former Sounder Alvaro Fernandez, not to mention Roman Torres’ imminent return to health this month. Torres, the hulking center back who tore his ACL last year after a promising start, is nearing match fitness again and returned to full team training on Monday. He didn’t travel with the team this time, but that time is nearing.
In other words, after waiting so long to see their banners rippling on the horizon, the cavalry is here. But is it too late for their charge to matter?
We’ll get some clues as to the answer to that question in Orlando. The Sounders need to start picking up a run of wins soon to make up the difference in the standings, and recent history would suggest they’ll need to score goals to get them against Orlando City, especially at home. The Lions haven’t lost at home all year, and they have the most goals of any team currently out of playoff position.
The genesis of that - or at least the most visible face - is of course Brazilian superstar Kaka, but paradoxically he hasn’t been Orlando City’s most crucial player over the last year. That honor belongs to Cyle Larin, the 21-year-old Canadian star striker who’s scored 28 goals in 47 games since joining the league out of the University of Connecticut last year. There’s a well-regarded theory that coaches should expect a goal every other game out of an elite striker. That’s precisely what Larin provides Orlando City.
Indeed, Larin’s scored goals in each of his last three appearances. The Sounders can reasonably hope this is the other game, the one in which he doesn’t score.
Orlando City of course has plenty of other attacking options, none scarier than Kevin Molino, who’s quietly gone about the business of racking up eight goals this year. But the real transformation under Kreis will be along the back. Orlando City was porous defensively under former coach Adrian Heath, and perhaps Kreis’s biggest task is to realign a leaky defense that has been one of the league’s worst over the last 16 months. To that end, he’s already ended the Brek Shea experiment at left back. Expect more changes.
The Sounders, meanwhile, have an opportunity against a vulnerable defense to tune up an attack that, while dangerous, had some spacing issues against the LA Galaxy.
It was clear that Schmetzer’s plan diverged from former coach Sigi Schmid’s from the get-go. Schmetzer arrayed his attacking group in a 4-2-3-1, wrapping Jordan Morris and Lodeiro around Clint Dempsey in the middle behind Nelson Valdez. It worked to a degree, but the positional solidity wasn’t there. Lodeiro and Morris pinched inside and everyone seemed to be stepping on everyone else. The Sounders produced chances out of the sheer quality present on the field, but Schmetzer will no doubt want it to be more cohesive in the days ahead.
The good news, though, is that the Sounders have a creative energy generator sitting in the middle directing traffic. Not only did Seattle lack that position, but the number of teams in the league who have that true heartbeat No. 10 currently sits at around half. And not only is he in camp, but he’s healthy, fit and already proved he can lay waste to MLS back lines.
There’s been plenty of uncertainty swirling around the Sounders this season. Seattle seemed to lack a singular identity after the offseason exits of players like Obafemi Martins, Lamar Neagle and Marco Pappa, and it showed.
But they got some of that back the minute Lodeiro walked through the door, and Seattle can continue to flesh out a developing picture this weekend in Orlando.
