Yeah, yeah, yeah, I missed the game last week. Vacation had to happen.
But here we go again, this time for playoff positioning, and hopefully no stomping.
[Time out! Before we look to tomorrow, D.C. United just announced that Greg Janicki has gone on the Disabled List with back spasms — and a case of lingering Marathon trauma — allowing the team to pick up former Chivas USA defender Lawson Vaughn. I was starting to think Janicki was already gone, but I did see him in the locker room after Wednesday’s game — getting his back worked on…]
Back to the Sounders. First, Ben Olsen, on the mood and turnaround in confidence: “I think it’s an exciting time for us right now. We’re looking forward to the chance to keep building on what we have this last couple weeks, and what a great chance against a team that’s been very good this year and certainly had our number last game in the Open Cup final. It’s not something you forget real quick, even though we’d like to say we do. I think it’s still pretty fresh in everybody’s mind. And hopefully we can go out and fix that situation.”
Olsen, on the “rivalry” with Seattle: “I hesitate to say we have a rivalry with an expansion team. But they’re also, let’s be honest, not your average expansion team. I think they’ve fielded a very good team, and they’ve got an organization that has been very successful this first year. I love to see that. I think they’ve got a great situation out there. Now it’s about us getting points and beating a team that is in a similar situation to us point-wise. It’s all about the playoff situation for us now, and three points is where we need to go. We’re still looking at trying to get up into those automatic spots.”
Clyde Simms: “I like the fact that we just played them recently, and they’re still fresh in our mind. They’ll be missing Freddie [Ljungberg], and that’s going to hurt them. I think he does a lot for them offensively. But they still have good players coming in and filling those spots.”
Without Ljungberg, Bryan Namoff is eyeing Nate Jaqua: “If we can play tight on him and not letting him be too confident with flicking balls on — it’s kind of their nature, second balls and the counter. We gotta stop their counter early on, and in doing so, limit time that players like Jaqua, like [Fredy] Montero can have the ball in our end facing us at goal because they’re good players. We can’t allow them to have too much creativity early on.”
DCU head coach Tom Soehn was also positive: “I think we’re in a pretty good way, as far as our psyche. I think we’re looking forward to a stretch where we can get into a, where we can actually get back to training and preparing the right way for teams instead of being in recovery mode.”
Soehn, whose squad will play its ninth game in a month three days later in Trinidad, discussed the use of heart monitors and the tracking of player minutes to help determine his rotation: “I think this year we’ve had less muscle strains than we’ve ever had. The ankle injuries and some of the hernia issues are over a course of time that it’s happened, which you can’t change. Ankle injuries happen. But muscle strains, we’ve been very cautious as to managing that. Every game, as you manage the minutes, you still evaluate the game. I thought in the L.A. game our defenders might have put in a lot of minutes, but it wasn’t a real demanding game for them because we had so much of the possession. You have to evaluate every game different, stretches different, and how guys feel. You apply all that, and figure out who’s next.”
Good stuff. See you at RFK Stadium tomorrow.
