Chad Marshall singlehandedly changed the tenor of discourse around the Seattle Sounders’ locker room this week.
Marshall enjoyed a fine defensive match last weekend in Houston, sweeping away a number of attacks and otherwise blunting the Dynamo’s quick-strike counter-based offense. But it was the Oalex Anderson cross he turned in on the game’s last kick to salvage a draw that elevated his afternoon to cult status. Had Marshall not cleaned up the refuse of Anderson’s low-slung cross, Seattle would’ve been looking at losses in four of its first five MLS games to start the year.
But soccer has a funny way of upending the seemingly predictable. And now, entering a match against the Philadelphia Union that has suddenly ballooned in importance, Seattle has another point in its rearview instead of a cratering loss.
Ask Sounders coach Sigi Schmid about the relevance of Seattle’s start in the broader scheme of things and he’ll give you an answer heavily seasoned by his prodigious experience in MLS. It’s April, Schmid is quick to note. Overanalyzing MLS results in April is tantamount to judging a play entirely based on its first act. The picture isn’t yet clear, and anyway the thing was written to be seen from beginning to end.
- RAVE TV PREVIEW: Get caught up ahead of this Saturday's match at CenturyLink Field
So it goes in Sounderland as the inexplicably hot Union ride into town (7 p.m. PT; JOEtv, Univision-Seattle/KIRO 97.3 FM, El Rey 1360AM).
Since joining MLS in 2010, the Union have struggled to carve out a niche in the league and it’s been four straight seasons now of postseason-less soccer in the City of Brotherly Love. In that sense things are different yet the same this season. On one hand, Philly’s skated through its first five games with the same star-less cadre of players, relying on a rotation and steady if unremarkable team-oriented play to make its mark.
And yet the Union have done it as well as they have at any point in their history over the past month-plus. They currently sit atop the Eastern Conference, tied with the Montreal Impact with nine points from five matches. The Sounders, meanwhile, are at the bottom of the West, with four points from their first five. Not the traditional positioning here.
The Union may not have an international name brand superstar upon which to rely, but they may have the most in-form American striker on their roster right now. C.J. Sapong might just be playing his way into U.S. national team contention.
Sapong struggled through an injury-shortened 2015 and still managed to score nine goals for the Union. Philly locked him up with a long-term deal in the offseason, and Sapong rewarded his employers by scoring three goals in his first five games of 2016. It’s worth noting that his confidence has to be soaring; before the season started, Sapong publicly set his sights on a 20-goal season. Based on his current form, he’s on target to get there.
Sapong hasn’t been called into the USMNT since 2012, and he’s only had two caps, but there are few - if any - American forwards doing more good things at present. It’s a good thing Brad Evans recently returned to the lineup, because the back line will see Giles Barnes v. 2.0 this weekend in Sapong. Lots of stabbing runs into the box. It’s worth noting Seattle lost Barnes last weekend, allowing the Jamaican to score a looping strike that took the Sounders nearly the entire match to equalize.
One more dangerous cog Seattle needs to track this week is Ilsinho. The dangerous Brazilian midfielder has been a terror for Philly this season, and the creative force of nature missed the Orlando City match last weekend with a hamstring strain. Earlier this week, Union coach Jim Curtin said Ilsinho will “at least be in the discussion for Seattle,” which is enough to keep him on the scouting chart. He can be that difficult to track defensively.
As for the Sounders, much of the talk out of training has been a simple focus on what it can do well. Of late, that has not been generating goals from the run of play.
The good news? Seattle got one of those last weekend off Marshall’s last-gasp equalizer. Sometimes all it takes to start an avalanche is a single snowflake, and in this case it was touched off by the incendiary Anderson. And the biggest building roster question this week is whether the Caribbean wide player has done enough to earn a starting spot this weekend.
So far this season the Sounders have been decidedly narrow. There’s an argument to be made that Anderson is the only true winger on the entire roster. Jordan Morris, Clint Dempsey, Darwin Jones, Andreas Ivanschitz, Herculez Gomez and Aaron Kovar have all had turns out wide in the 4-3-3 this season, while Michael Farfan, Cristian Roldan and Victor Mansaray have all filled in at wide positions in the past. And yet arguably none of those players are either most comfortable in a wide position or capable of filling a long term starting role there. Whether Schmid opts to stick with the 4-3-3 or roll back the clock and turn to the 4-4-2 he’s run for the majority of his coaching career, he’ll run into the same issue; he’s lacking width.
Anderson could help fix that problem. The question is whether he’s ready. To date, Anderson’s largely filled in as a raging spark off the bench, and his run to the end line that produced Seattle’s goal against Houston was one of the team’s few truly dangerous moments over the entire 90 minutes. If Schmid wants to roll with the hot hand and perhaps rest a higher profile name, he has that option this weekend.
As the Sounders’ scouting arms fanned out into world this week to seek out reinforcements, Schmid will no doubt want more out of an attack that’s produced the third-fewest shots on target in the league this year. In their first five games, the Sounders are averaging just shy of four shots on goal per game. Meanwhile, only one team has fewer than Seattle’s four goals, and perhaps more worryingly, the team only has one collective assist so far this season.
If Marshall’s goal does indeed spark something in Seattle’s attack, now would be a good time for it to start bearing more fruit.
