Who: Seattle Sounders vs. Caledonia AIA Where: CenturyLink Field, Seattle, WA When: 7:00PM, Thursday, 8/2 Watch: FSC Listen: ????? Internet: CONCACAF TV Another season, another CONCACAF Champions League for the Sounders start to slog through. This time with less games and a better chance to advance to the knockout rounds as we won't be facing a Mexican team. We start off with the champion from the CFU Championship, Caledonia AIA. Caledonia AIA hails from lovely Trinidad and Tobago and this represents the first time that they will be playing in CCL. My knowledge of T&T soccer can be fit into a thimble and still leave room for a finger, so any help would be appreciated. With a rough game on Saturday in Denver and another game against the much improved Galaxy a mere 3 days after this one, I'm expecting our reserves to be well represented in the starting line-up. It also sounds like the crowd will be quite light for this game. The FO has already said the west side and north end will both be closed off for this game and I've heard nary a peep from the advertising side of things, so who knows. The new format with only three teams per group and only the winner of the groups advancing means it is critical that the Sounders win all of their home games and even get a few points on the road, so here's hoping for a good showing by our reserves.
I'm generally even worse at predicting the line-ups for CCL matches, but Sigi is usually pretty consistent with putting out reserves on offense and mostly starters on defense. So I'm going to throw out the following Yoshou's Guaranteed to be Wrong Predicted Line-up: -------- Ochoa --------- Montero ----------- Caskey ----- Rose/Alonso ------ Cato Burch------Ianni/Hurtado-----Scott --------------Gspurning--------------
It will be interesting to see how Sigi manages the roster this week with a big game against LA on Sunday. Yoshou's line up is plausible but I could see a Carrasco/Evans central midfield almost as easily as a Alsonso/Rose combination. I also wonder if they don't want to push Gspurning too much after the injury and put Weber in instead.
With Estrada out and Levesque retired, all of a sudden we're thin at forward. With all the minutes that Freddy and Eddie have been playing, is one of them really going to start all four games over the 10 days starting on Thursday? Maybe Sigi trots Ochoa out Thursday and next Saturday (or this Sunday) so that that doesn't happen, but I'm going to go against the grain and say neither of them start against Caledonia. I'll go for the superfecta. Caledonia: -----------Ochoa--------Cato------------ ---Caskey-----Rose/Carrasco------Evans ----Burch-----Ianni/Hurtado----Scott -------------------Gspurning------------ LA: ---------Montero-----Johnson----------- ---Caskey-----Rose/Alonso-------Rosales ----Gonzalez----Parke/Ianni-----Johansson -------------------Gspurning-------------- Cup final: ---------Montero--------Johnson------------ --Evans---Tiffert/Alonso----Rosales -Gonzalez---Parke/Ianni---Scott ---------------Gspurning----------- SJ: ------Montero---Johnson------ ---Caskey----Tiffert/Alonso---Cato ---Burch----Parke/Ianni---Johansson ----------------Gspurning-------------
I think we just saw an example of why Hurtado hasn't been playing much lately. Awful penalty to take in the box.
You think? If I'm Hurtado, I'm worried about my job this offseason... Definitely not worth what he is getting paid.
1st half= Woooo! 2nd half= Zzzzzzzzzz Definitely no assed the second half. Should have scored a lot more goals.. This could come down to GD.
classic ziggy, put on the defenders for mid, and mid for forwards even when there is no attack threat when we are ahead the 2nd half, screw the GD.....
A little disconcerting to see how timid the offense was. On the other hand our defense wasn't that convincing. Hurtado just can't seem to stop himself from making at least one bonehead play a game.
So off season needs upgrades at LB and RB and at least one more CB. Forward and Midfield look pretty solid at this point. Figured Steve would have gotten in last night at some point, but nope. Also disappointed we took the foot off the gas in the 2nd half, should have easily been a 4 or 5 goal win. Oh and good job on the starting 11 Yoshou, you were not off by much.
Sigi threw a curve ball at me with Evans at RB. Damn him. I wonder how far Sigi is going to take the Evans at RB thing now that we have Tiffert.. I wonder if he might be grooming him to be starting RB in the near future.
I think he's lucky there's no expansion team coming next year. But maybe Adrian will offer him a lower salary after his contract expires. It would've been nice if four of the most important games of this year is not squeezed into 2 weeks (3 weeks if you include the cascadia game the week after). Sigi should be careful about fitness for these guys. Must've been the reason why the honey badger was taken out early. Oooohhh... much better than Santos, eh... No... we're good at RB. Scott is doing well as a back-up. As for the LB, I noticed that Caledonia was attacking more frequently on the right after halftime. Did they think that our LB is even worse than Evans? I heard he did this because Scott just got an injury. But I think he's safer there if Sigi considers Scott as a potential CB. Our current midfield is a battleground for minutes. PS. This new BS.com format sucks.
Well, I loved the first half; great movement, great patience, great possession. Yeh, there were some individual errors but it reminded me some of the part of the first half against Chelsea when the Sounders took the wheel. Could have been 4 or 5 to 1 if they had not taken their foot off the gas in the second half.
Good news for Sounders. Caledonia and Marathon drew 0-0 in Trinidad. A win next week and Caledonia is knocked out and Marathon is on the ropes.