Forever Football Show: 'a tricky time for Sounders right now'

Major League Soccer. United States Open Cup. CONCACAF Champions League.

These are the three compeitions Seattle Sounders FC find themselves still alive in this summer. The race for a playoff spot in MLS will continue to dominate plans, but a spot in the US Open Cup Final is only a win over Chivas USA away. The CONCACAF Champions League sees Mexico side Monterrey visit Qwest Field on Wednesday night.

In the video below the guys at www.ForeverFootballShow.com talk about the Sounders' balancing act in these three competitions. Thiago Silva says it 'is a tricky time for the Sounders right now.'

Indeed.

Monterrey on Wednesday is as close to a 'must win' in the CCL as you can get, especially after the club fell 2:1 last week in Honduras. However, most view Monterrey as the class of the group.

Saturday the Sounders host the Chicago Fire in the return of Freddie Ljungberg to Qwest Field. Beyond that small drama is a larger one: both clubs are battling on the edge of playoff contention, against each other.

Next Wednesday Chivas USA comes to Starfire in the US Open Cup semifinals. How much would the Sounders love to advance to a second straight final, and then outbid their opponent to host it? A lot.

The real riddle here is how to maintain health and excellence in these competitions on an MLS-salary level roster. So far this has been a difficult puzzle for MLS sides to solve in the league's history. No club has ever won this "triple."

"We want to win all three games," head coach Sigi Schmid said after a practice session this week. "Obviously the league game is important for us because we want to get in the playoff hunt. Champions League is important because you got to win your home games. We are in the semifinals and would like to defend the Open Cup as well. So they are all equally important and we are going to approach each game with the idea of putting our best lineup out for each opponent.”

Are the Sounders deep enough?

“Our approach is simply each game we want to put out the best team. [. . .] We want to win every game that we enter into," continues Schmid. "My feeling has always been as a coach, and maybe in life, maybe it came down from my father to me, it’s just you deal with what you can deal with and you change what you can change. I can’t change the distance between Seattle and San Jose, Costa Rica or Columbus or anything like that. It’s something we have to deal with. We travel more than any other team within our league already and being in that competition of the Champions League where all the other teams are going to be south of the border we are going to travel even more. [. . .] At the end of the day, we can’t do anything to change it so why worry about it? Let’s just get on with it.”

On facing Monterrey, Schmid says “I think traditionally the Mexican teams have been the stronger teams in the competition. Most teams won at home in their first game, which is also pretty normal. But Monterrey has got some talented players. [Humberto] Suazo is a World Cup player who is a handful up front. I have seen him play for a lot of years now. I know he didn’t make it in Spain when he went back there but he is still a very, very good player. [Neri] Cardozo on the wing is a really good player. [Osvaldo] Martinez is a good player for them. They have different options underneath. [Sergio] Santana has done well for them. They have got a lot of experience in the back with [Duilio] Davino. They have [Severo] Meza who likes to attack on the right side. So they have got good quality players, otherwise you don’t win the Apertura in Mexico. It’s important for us to play well. Again, I think the Marathón game was important for our team because I think the guys who were in the competition for the first time or playing that type of game for the first time, the uncertainty left them during the game and they said, ‘Wait a second, we have nothing to fear.’”

The Fire present an opportunity to come face to face with a fellow playoff race opponent. “We still need to get points to move onto the playoffs and Chicago is somebody who is a direct competitor," Schmid reminds. "So it’s a six point game. What we look at right now is there are still some teams that have fewer games than us, just like Chicago has fewer games, and we look at if they won out, would they pass us? There are about four or five teams that are behind us now that even if they won out their games couldn’t pass us. Chicago is one of the teams that if they won out their games, they could pass us. But if we can walk away with a victory on Saturday then we put them into that same position. They can win out their games and they can’t pass us. So that’s what we are looking to do, to keep our distance, so that’s important.”