This Saturday, the Seattle Sounders will end a three game road trip that has seen them go to the East coast to face New York City FC, the Midwest to face Columbus Crew SC and back to the West coast to face the Vancouver Whitecaps and finish the road trip. That is a lot of miles and a lot of time away from home.
The Sounders will be looking to bounce back after suffering a 3-2 setback against the Crew. The Whitecaps are coming off a very convincing 3-0 thrashing of the Philadelphia Union. The Whitecaps currently sit at the top of the Western Conference standings with a record of 6-2-3 (W-L-T) and the Sounders sit in third with a record of 5-3-1.
A win against Vancouver would accomplish something that the Sounders haven’t done since June 8, 2013 and something they haven’t done on the road since September 24, 2011. It’s hard to imagine that the Sounders haven’t beaten the Whitecaps in almost two years. The interesting part being that it took the Whitecaps until July 6, 2013 to beat the Sounders and ever since then, they have owned them. The Sounders will be looking to reverse those fortunes, but it won’t be easy.
The Whitecaps have a very dangerous attacking team with Pedro Morales, Darren Mattocks and Octavio Rivero. Rivero came into the league as hot as they get, scoring goals seemingly at will. He has cooled off a bit, but Vancouver is still just as dangerous. The Sounders have Obafemi Martins, Clint Dempsey, Marco Pappa and Lamar Neagle leading the attack. That being said, only Martins, Dempsey and Neagle have scored for the Sounders. Dempsey and Martins have combined for 13 of the Sounders 15 goals. The other two belong to Neagle. Pappa and the other players need to find a way to start putting balls into the back of the net.
In their last five matches, the Whitecaps are 2-2-1 while the Sounders are 3-2-0. With a win over the Whitecaps, the Sounders would only be one point behind them in the standings and maybe even more importantly, would take the early lead in the 2015 Cascadia Cup standings.