Freddie Ljungberg's ready, but Sounders FC don't want to rush it

March 10, 4:00 PMSeattle Soccer ExaminerDavid Falk

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The highest-paid Seattle Sounders FC player, Swedish attacker Freddie Ljungberg, is with the club for the season now after two months of rehabilitation following hip surgery.

Ljungberg is the subject of several stories hitting the internet today. In them Ljungberg expresses a desire to be more active than the club will let him be.

Freddie Ljungberg was announced as a Sounder last Fall. (Jenni Conner)

"I want to start playing now," Ljungberg told Sounders Watch. "They want to be a bit careful with it. (I'm) so much ahead of schedule, worried it's too good to be true. Worried that if I start training really hard, I'll have a setback. We don't know."

“We’re not pushing too much of a timetable on it,” coach Sigi Schmid told The News Tribune. “We want to see how he (feels after his Monday work), how he gets through (today). He’s trained a little bit of soccer before he came with a lower division team in Sweden. This is a little bit faster, tempo is a little bit quicker. So, we’ll see how he goes each day, and our expectation is that in two-three weeks he’ll be full-out in training.”

Ljunberg speculated on MLSnet.com about where he'll play once he is cleared to do so. "I'm probably going to play central to get a lot of the ball either as a dropping-off striker or as a central midfielder," Ljungberg said. "That's what I played at Arsenal when we were 1-nil down. I went up one position when we were trying to get a goal, so I had a lot of experience there when I was young."

Scoop from GOALSeattle.com's forums:

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Chris Eylander has hurt his knee, so Seattle's back-up goalkeeper has been resting it. Meanwhile this has opened a chance for Ben Dragavon to possibly return to Seattle for a while.

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