Shortly after he was taken from practice in an ambulance on Wednesday, Sounders FC bedrock defender Chad Marshall tweeted the all-clear. Marshall suffered a neck sprain during practice, and the scene was tense as he was immobilized on a stretcher and trucked to the hospital for testing.
Then, a few hours later, this.
“Thank you everyone for the messages and well wishes,” Marshall’s tweet read. “Really means a lot. Scans went well and I’m doing alright.”
It was perhaps the most relieving text in Sounders FC history, and it was favorited more than 1,000 times in 24 hours. For at least a moment, it hardly mattered that Marshall was the defending MLS Defender of the Year and arguably the team’s most consistent player. The public was just relieved he was OK.
Marshall’s since been dispatched from the hospital, but Seattle coach Sigi Schmid expects him to miss Sunday’s critical Western Conference clash against the LA Galaxy at CenturyLink Field. Further, just moments before Marshall sprained his neck on Wednesday, recently installed leftback Oniel Fisher pulled up with a muscle injury and is questionable Sunday’s matchup as well.
That could mean Seattle starts three defenders from the original 2009 MLS team: Brad Evans, Zach Scott and Leo Gonzalez.
The Sounders FC attack isn’t solved, necessarily, but the front line is as healthy as it’s been in months. With Clint Dempsey, Obafemi Martins, Andreas Ivanschitz, Nelson Valdez and others rounding into healthy form, that thrusts the gaze back onto Seattle’s beat up back line this weekend.
Marshall’s absence will likely push the Evans-Scott duo back into the limelight for Sunday. With Román Torres already on the shelf for the season, the depth Seattle’s done so much to till will be tested. Don’t be surprised to see a young defender like Jimmy Ockford or Damion Lowe make the bench.
Evans and Scott started their fourth game of the season as centerback partners last weekend against Sporting KC, and surprisingly enough, Dom Dwyer’s late equalizer was the first goal they’ve surrendered as a pairing. In each of the first three games they’d started in that position together this year, Sounders FC chalked up shutouts. Evans and Scott have started together in the XI more than that this season, but with Evans at different positions.
The good news in ostensibly bringing Scott along to replace Marshall is that Evans is already able to replicate Marshall’s distribution ability. And that helps fuel the most possession-forward side in MLS when all of its pistons are chugging.
Marshall gets typecast as a typical stand-up aerial defender due to his size, and it’s true that he’s among the best in the league with his head. But he’s also surprisingly calm and analytical with the ball at his feet for his size, and his 83 percent passing accuracy on 917 passes this season is better than some MLS midfielders. To have a centerback like Marshall who averages about 35 passes per game and only opts to boot 17 percent of them long is a major luxury not every club can boast.
Evans’ history in the midfield gives him the ability to cover for some of that, which is good. Because the primary way Seattle is most likely to fight the LA Galaxy’s fire on Sunday is via possession. Give the Galaxy attack an inch of space and they’ll take a mile.
As a baseline, here’s what the Galaxy’s attack looks like from a 30,000-foot perspective.
Nobody in MLS has more than LA’s 52 goals this season, and for some level of broader perspective, they score a goal on average a full 20 minutes more frequently and more than a full percentage point higher than Sounders FC.
The thing to note with the most attention is LA’s efficiency. They’ve only had eight more shots on target than Seattle this season, and yet they’ve produced 12 more goals. There’s no question the mid-season additions of attacking luminaries like Giovani dos Santos and Steven Gerrard poured gasoline on the fire, but the logs of the fire itself have been the unpredictable Robbie Keane for several years now.
“They’re predictably dangerous,” Sounders FC goalkeeper Stefan Frei said. “We’re going to be ready for that. They have some individual talent and they don’t need too many chances.”
Keane’s 16 goals this season put him in fourth place in MLS in that category, and his ruthless efficiency is what got him there. A 30 percent conversion ratio for a forward is insanity, and of his total shots, he forces opposing keepers to deal with 66 percent of them. Unsurprisingly, all 16 of his goals came from inside the box.
Keane is arguably better than anyone in MLS at forcing teams to deal with his threat. He almost never runs himself out of a game on his own. That’s on you to figure out.
The difficulty for Seattle’s backline - whatever that ends up looking like on Sunday - is tracking dos Santos and Keane together. Neither are traditional strikers, and they tend to pair up top in Bruce Arena’s tried-and-true 4-4-2 formation. Both prefer to drop a bit deeper to collect possession from Gerrard, which tends to rip up unwary central defenders like a rotted wood beams. The threat ends up bursting from unpredictable angles, and if a centerback tracks one or the other too far from his line, there’s inevitably space in behind.
The key could be an Osvaldo Alonso-led central midfield busting up those attacks while endeavoring to play keep-away as much as possible. Luckily, Seattle’s well-suited to the tactic.
With the playoffs just around the corner, this game is big for seeding purposes. If the regular season ended today, the Galaxy would own the top seed in the Western Conference, while Seattle would be the fourth seed and be forced to play Sporting KC in the first round.
The caveat there is that Seattle is just four points adrift of the Galaxy’s top position, meaning Sunday could go a long way toward earning the Sounders a spot in the West’s top two to bypass the initial knockout round. And on the other end of the spectrum, Seattle’s still just three points from dropping below the line for playoff qualification. Such is life in MLS.
Either way, Sunday’s big. And the team knows it.
“It’s probably as tight as the league’s ever been,” Schmid said. “We said at the beginning of the year that the West was going to be more competitive than the East. I think it’s proven itself that way.”
