TUCSON, Ariz. — When Will Bruin joined the Seattle Sounders last offseason from the Houston Dynamo, the only team he had known in six professional seasons, he was eager for a fresh start. And after 13 goals and four assists in 2017 in regular season and postseason play, he’s ready to take it even further this year.
“This preseason I feel there’s more of a role I can assume, whereas last season I was kind of feeling it out and making my way into the team,” Bruin said. “I want to be more vocal this year and try to be more of a veteran guy.
“I was looking back at how things played out last year, and I was happy with the goal total at the end of the year,” he continued. “But as a forward, you always want more.”
Bruin finished 2017 on a tear, playing his best soccer when the Sounders needed it most. He scored five goals in the final seven matches of the year, including the playoffs. He buried Houston along the way, helping stake Seattle to a massive 2-0 lead on the road in the first leg of the Western Conference Championship before recording a goal and an assist in the home leg to send the Sounders back to MLS Cup.
Bruin will have another chance to make an immediate impact shortly when Seattle squares off against El Salvador’s Santa Tecla in the Round of 16 in CONCACAF Champions League in a few weeks. Bruin played CCL in his first two years in Houston, and he’s excited to return.
“It’s always a grind, but that was before the new format of automatically going to the Round of 16,” Bruin said. “That makes it a little easier travel-wise…We have our first round against Santa Tecla and we can’t look past that. If we win that, we could face a Mexican team, so you always want to play against the best teams in the region.”
With CCL and the start of the regular season overlapping, Bruin should have plenty of opportunities early on to pick up right where he left off, and he’s ready to make the most of it.
“My goal this year is to score more than I did the previous year,” he said. “For me, it’s being consistent and playing consistently, having high expectations at training each day and the 90 minutes on the field will take care of itself.”
