Another season, another bevy of big games.
Every year, you can almost hear the surprised gasps as teams rip into their schedules for the first time. A brutal schedule can cost a team valuable seeding in hindsight, and stacked up road games at the wrong time of year can be a death knell to a team’s playoff push.
Needless to say, the schedule matters.
The Sounders certainly have plenty of intriguing matchups in 2016, which were revealed Thursday, January 7, when the full schedule dropped. Here’s a look at five of the most interesting matchups of the season as a MLS Cup-seeking Sounders team looks to navigate the notoriously treacherous waters of MLS travel.
5. Orlando City SC (Aug. 7, Orlando Citrus Bowl)
As MLS expansion trucks into the 20’s, the opportunity for new matchups and scenery is omnipresent. Teams will have fixtures they’ve never had before, go to new stadiums, be exposed to new fan groups. That’s why this midsummer melee is one of the more intriguing battles the Sounders face in 2016.
Seattle didn’t have to go to Orlando last year, which was a huge weight off the schedule, considering the road trip is 3,000 miles long. A loyal smattering of Orlando City fans made it to CenturyLink to watch the Lions get smacked 4-0 in August, and now they’ll be looking to return the favor at home in the swampy environs of a Florida August. The Sounders have never played in Orlando, meaning this will be the team’s only new MLS stadium experience in 2016. Aside from being a serious test to Seattle fans’ ability to travel to see the game, that should provide the local fans something new to experience. From Orlando City’s perspective, they hope a measure of vengeance is on the cards, too.
4. Vancouver Whitecaps FC (Oct. 2, BC Place)
The Sounders won the Cascadia Cup last season for the first time since 2011, and they did it in the Whitecaps’ yard. Goals from Andreas Ivanschitz, Obafemi Martins and Gonzalo Pineda locked up a smashing 3-0 win in Vancouver on Sept. 19, clinching the most prestigious regional cup in MLS in Seattle’s favor. It was one heck of a way to sew it up.
This matchup on Oct. 2 represents Seattle’s last Cascadia matchup of 2016. While it’s impossible to predict whether the cup will be locked up by then, the fact that it’s in Vancouver and could well decide what happens shouldn’t be lost in translation. The three Cascadia teams owned the Western Conference last year, as they accounted for three of the final four teams left in the West, and Portland ended up champs despite playing the final on the road. That should refocus just how impressive winning the Cascadia Cup is these days, and if Seattle managed to clinch it for a second year in a row on the road? Not a bad way to do it.
3. Sporting Kansas City (March 6, CenturyLink Field)
There’s a lot of excitement building around the home opener, which also happens to be Seattle’s curtain-raiser for the entire season. For the second straight year, Seattle drew the nationally televised Sunday night game to complement FS1’s weekend-opening broadcast. That’s no surprise, considering the Sounders’ unrivaled home atmosphere, but it certainly benefits a sure-to-be charged up Sounders side ready to avenge the way the 2015 season ended.
The Sounders struggled with SKC in 2015, drawing twice home and away and losing a bitterly fought 1-0 battle at Sporting Park thanks in part to a questionable penalty called on 'keeper Stefan Frei. SKC was a playoff team in 2015 and came inches from beating eventual champs Portland, so Seattle will have to be wary. But don’t forget how last season started, either. Martins and Clint Dempsey were both on cracking form and Seattle buried a New England team that had been in the MLS Cup title game months earlier. Never underestimate a Seattle team playing at home, no matter the time of year.
2. FC Dallas (May 14, Toyota Stadium)
And so they meet again. This first rematch of the hard-fought two-legged Western Conference Semifinals from last year that marked the terminus of Seattle’s season should be a firecracker. The clip of FCD’s Walker Zimmerman drilling the game-winning penalty in Toyota Stadium and wheeling around with a deadpan look on his face no doubt seared its way into the consciousness of the team in the offseason. Sure, this is only a regular season game in the third month of the season, but at its core it’s so much more than that.
The fact that the first match between these two in 2016 is back at the scene of the crime from last fall is almost too cinematic. The actual result may not directly factor into the postseason race, but it’ll certainly give Seattle its first true championship-caliber test as to where it stands headed into the middle third of the schedule.
1. Portland Timbers (Aug. 21, at CenturyLink Field)
This won’t be the first game these teams play in 2016. That comes a month earlier, when Seattle makes the trip down I-5 for a nationally televised humdinger. But this is the only game these teams are sure to play at CenturyLink Field during the season, and you can bet the CLink will be brimming with excitement for the occasion. When is it not?
The bigger picture is that these games tend to have seismic impact on the course of a season. Two certainly did for the Sounders in 2015. The U.S. Open Cup loss in June set the tone for a miserable summer, and the 2-1 win over Portland at home at the end of August started an unbeaten run that lasted Seattle until penalties knocked them out of the playoffs months later. There’s no doubting the propulsive impact these games can have on the broader landscape, and the fact that Portland will be dragging an MLS Cup with them – figuratively, anyway - will be plenty to get the crowd amped.
