Sounders FC's three-game road swing is near an end as the Rave Green is set to take on Cascadia rival Vancouver Whitecaps FC. Sounders captain Brad Evans takes a look back at last weekend's match against Columbus Crew SC and talks about how the team prepared for its trip to Canada this week in his latest entry in his Captain's Notes.
We are coming off a tough loss away from home against Columbus. Looking back now, it was a tough trip to New York, flying home the next day, preparing for two days then flying straight to Columbus. It's always difficult going on back-to-back trips to the East Coast because you aren't able to have many training sessions and it's a long trip. We were also playing against a very good team, with all credit to Crew SC. We can all admit we were not at our sharpest and we weren't at our best.
Taking that into account, I thought we had a good week of training this week. We had a few tough days of training; I think we felt that we were outworked in Columbus and that's something that isn't a characteristic of our team. That's something we are looking to fix this weekend against Vancouver.
Now we play the best team in the Western Conference. They are a very good team, very fluid, very attacking — pretty similar to what we saw in Columbus. We can expect them to press numbers forward, to push their outside backs forward. They have two very good centerbacks and a very good goalkeeper. With the addition of [Octavio] Rivero up top, he's really changed the dynamic of the team. [Pedro] Morales is still a top player in this league. You can really go up and down their lineup and it's a solid team.
There's nothing to be afraid of, though. All this poses is another challenge. We still sit pretty close to the top of the standings but our standards are higher than that. We want more.
It comes with more because this game is about the Cascadia Cup. That's something that's eluded us the last few years. We've won other trophies but this is one that we want back. On top of that, Vancouver had our number last year. In a way, we want revenge.
The guys have to be smart. We have to know that we're playing away from home. BC Place means another game on turf. It's a difficult place to play and hard to pick up points here. We have to bring our best, have to bring our A-game and be tight defensively. I know that we'll continue to create chances up top.
Let's go Sounders!
