TUKWILA, Wash. — The Seattle Sounders head into Sunday’s match in Los Angeles (1 p.m. PT; ESPN; 107.7 The End, El Rey 1360am) against the Galaxy with plenty of confidence.
Fresh off a 1-0 win over Cascadia rival Vancouver Whitecaps, the Sounders have only lost once in their last eight matches and are just five points out of the final Western Conference playoff spot with six matches remaining. The Galaxy, meanwhile, are in second place and unbeaten in 15 home matches this season. They drew with Sporting Kansas City on Sunday after the recently returned-Landon Donovan scored a late equalizer.
Seattle is in great form, but it knows what it’s up against in southern California this weekend.
“LA is a good team and I respect [Galaxy head coach Bruce Arena],” Sounders interim head coach Brian Schmetzer said. “How do we play defense? Is [Robbie] Keane going to play? Is [Giovani] Dos Santos going to play? How does Bruce set up his team? We’ll work on that during the week.”
Sounders forward Jordan Morrisscored the game-winner last week, his fifth of the season and 10th overall. On Tuesday, Schmetzer praised Morris’ effort and ability to capitalize on the one good chance he got. He said that’s the mindset the team needs to have against LA.
“We’re going to create 10-20 chances every game, when your chance comes you need to be able to put that in the back of the net,” Schmetzer said. “It might be one chance a game.”
The Sounders will need to have to have another strong effort defensively. They kept a clean sheet last Saturday for the first time in 11 matches and Major League Soccer named defender Chad Marshall to its Team of the Week.
This becomes all the more important if captain Brad Evans is unable to play this weekend. Evans was a late scratch in San Jose two weeks ago before sitting on Saturday after being called “a game-time decision.” Schmetzer said Evans has been dealing with two separate injuries, his lower back and his calf, and that they may be related to each other.
“He was compensating for one and the other got worse,” Schmetzer said. “The trainers don’t know if one injury had an effect on the other. We’re working on both of those and we’re trying to get him healthy.”
The Sounders have a scheduled off day on Wednesday before returning to training on Thursday morning.
