Editor's Note: As the Seattle Sounders' MLS regular season opener draws closer, SoundersFC.com contributor Will Parchman will take a look at the team position by position every day this week, leading up to the team's match against Sporting Kansas City at CenturyLink Field on Sunday (4 p.m. PT; FS1/KIRO 97.3 FM/El Rey 1360AM). In the second part of the series, Parchman looks at how an offseason overhaul shaped the midfield.
If the midfield is the engine room of any lineup, then the Sounders got a major offseason overhaul under the hood to prepare for 2016.
It isn’t that the midfield was poor in 2015, or even inadequate. At times, namely over the first couple months of the season, the Sounders pulled off sublime moments of interchange that earned the team praise as one of the best passing outfits in the league.
Injury and fatigue scuttled that hot start late in the season, and by the end Seattle had become much more direct in the 4-4-2. Still successful, but the formula had clearly changed.
A drastic alteration in the offseason should make 2016 another interesting one to monitor, particularly in the middle.
Part of the reason for the move to the 4-3-3 in the offseason was the plentiful options up top, but the midfield arrangement had its say as well. The departure of Andy Rose and particularly of Gonzalo Pineda made the tactical choices a numbers game. What do you do with what’s left?
By the end of the preseason, Sounders coach Sigi Schmid presciently arranged Osvaldo Alonso in his comfortable holding slot above the center backs and dropped in Erik Friberg next to him. In defense, this would play out like a solid bank of two in the middle, shielding the center backs and providing cover for any chasing attacking players dropping in to defend.
What was unclear is what would happen to Andreas Ivanschitz. And it seems we have our answer.
It’s been seemingly eons since the Sounders had a true central attacking midfielder chained to the hole behind the lead strikers, and Ivanschitz never seemed like that player. At least not last year. But in preseason experiments - which were backed up in Seattle’s CONCACAF Champions League matchup with Club América last week - Ivanschitz displayed a robust sense of attacking space in that No. 10 role.
However much of an experiment that ultimately was is up for debate, but the results were undoubtedly positive. Just like that, Schmid’s 4-3-3 had its first choice midfield for the start of the season.
Imagine the midfield like an amorphous triangle, its angles shifting and breaking and coming together again as it both tracks the opposition and builds attacks of its own. That kind of predictable unpredictability is something the midfield in a 4-3-3 relies upon. Will Friberg set off on an adventure toward the opposition penalty area, overlapping on a dropping Ivanschitz? Or will Alonso and Friberg sit back, adjusting to a rampant attack while Ivanschitz circulates possession in his own half?
The options here are worth mentioning. And they are legion.
The bigger concern is who fills in off the bench over the course of a lengthy season. Not only did the Sounders lose Pineda and Rose, but Micheal Azira is now in Colorado, which means there are fewer depth options in central midfield than arguably anywhere else on the first team roster. That becomes especially key now that the Sounders are playing with, essentially, three central midfielders.
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The first option for now appears to be Cristian Roldan, the young Generation adidas signee who showed encouraging strides during his rookie campaign in 2015. Roldan came out of the University of Washington as a box-to-box midfielder, but he began making the transition to Alonso’s heir apparent last year. All the early signs point to that continuing into 2016 as Schmid grooms Roldan to step into that role in the future.
The offseason signing of veteran MLS central midfielder Nathan Sturgis now seems more critical than ever. Sturgis, who’s in his second stint with the team, will likely not be a first choice defensive midfielder, but if last year was any indication, he should expect to see plenty of time when the season gets hot in the summer.
If the depth is concerning, the good news is that the first choice three-man midfield in the 4-3-3 already looks as robust as any in MLS this year. If Seattle can stay healthy there - and that’s a monumental if - there’s no reason this crew can’t set a few new benchmarks in 2016.
