Sounders FC is back at CenturyLink Field on Sunday for its first-ever matchup with expansion side Orlando City SC. Since the Rave Green last played a home match two weeks ago, they have brought in a trio of new players: Andreas Ivanschitz, Nelson Valdez and Román Torres.
Here to analyze Sunday’s match is Marcus Hahnemann, former Sounders FC goalkeeper and current broadcaster.
On the Sounders signing three new players:
Whenever you have new players come in, you get change. And right now we definitely need a positive change. When players come in, there’s competition for places and it makes everybody play better. So even if someone comes in and doesn’t start or even play, that’s sometimes still enough to push a team in the right direction.
On overcoming language barrier with Torres:
We don’t need him to write a novel. We just need him to understand a few simple phrases: Left, right, step up, pressure, away, keeper’s ball, give it back to me…Even if you can’t speak English, you can probably understand it a little bit. You learn those couple of things really quickly, and ultimately that’s all you need. It does make explaining certain things more difficult, but if the guy understands soccer, then everything becomes pretty easy.
On facing Orlando for the very first time:
Knowing how much effort [Assistant Coach Brian Schmetzer] puts into the videos, they’ve got a lot of information on these guys. Sometimes when you play certain teams a lot, you rely on past experiences. So for this game, people might pay more attention to the video because they’ve never seen them play. When you don’t know a lot about them, you start analyzing the videos more and looking at more stuff. You could actually be better prepared because you’re not relying on past experiences.
