In the third installment of his Captain's Notes, Sounders defender/midfielder Brad Evans talks about the last two matches at home in Seattle and looks forward to the first road match of 2015 against MLS-leading FC Dallas.
Obviously not the result that we wanted for our second week. We talked about pushing forward and making a statement, and I think that game came down to personal mistakes, something I take on my shoulders and I take the blame. Without those, I think we win that game.
But, obviously, we’ve had some time to think about it and we push forward and you always try to not make the same mistake twice. We played a very good San Jose team, they put us under pressure with three clinical finishes. I think we were unlucky not to tie the game, even with those mistakes, but we live to fight another day. I’ll definitely take the blame for those.
Regardless, phenomenal support from the crowd. I’ve had phenomenal support pushing forward, kind messages on Twitter and Facebook, something that’s been spurring me on personally and I know that the boys are spurred on by that as well.
We had a good week of practice and got to play Club Tijuana, a very good team who is used to playing on turf and got a good result against them. I thought the first half we moved the ball really well, the pace was good, the timing was good, the formation worked really well against them and I think they were a little bit surprised at how well we played and how well we did against them. That’s something we can hopefully take forward moving on to the game against Dallas.
Now we meet the hottest team in MLS right now, who closed out last season very strong…a team we have to get a result against. This is a team who will be missing a lot of key contributors for them with international break, as well as us.
It’s going to be a test of depth, and obviously being away from home we have to be smart, we’ve got to play a good, solid game and we’re ready for the test.
We had a great day of training on Friday and now we look forward to Saturday’s game. I think we’ll have the support from our crowd as we always do, we’ll have family in the stands spurring us on and we look to get our first three points on the road. Go Sounders!
