TUKWILA — Oh yeah, the other guys.
The expected Seattle Sounders debut of U.S. national team captain Clint Dempsey on Saturday has been so glaringly in the spotlight this week that it has been easy to forget the team they will line up against.
That is Toronto FC, and they’re feeling pretty good about themselves these days. The Reds started the season 1-7-5, but they’re 2-0-1 in their past three.
The recent success sends them into this match as something more than the Washington Generals — the perennial patsies for the Harlem Globetrotters, the necessary “other guys” against whom the real stars can show their stuff.
“Toronto’s won their last two games, so they’re feeling very confident,” Seattle coach Sigi Schmid said. “So that’s something where you can’t look at a game that early into the season and look at a game now because they’re so vastly different, and they have stepped up. I know that (Matias) Laba scored a good goal for them last week against New England. (Robert) Earnshaw hasn’t really been there lately, (but Richard) Eckersley has done well for them in the back and solidified the back line with (Steven) Caldwell moving in as one of the center backs. … It’s an opponent that we have to be very careful of.”
OK, but enough about them.
The real reason eyes across Major League Soccer will be fixed on a match between the ninth-place team in the East and the seventh-place team in the West is Dempsey: who was introduced one week ago as the Sounders’ newest designated player, and the league’s highest-paid player.
Dempsey missed Tuesday training due to illness, but he was back Wednesday, traveled with the team Thursday and seems certain to make his Sounders debut today at BMO Field.
“It was good to get training just to work on a couple things,” Dempsey said. “There’s a lot of quality on this team, and I’m just looking forward to getting to know the team better, and helping the team do well. … Sigi’s is the boss, so he’ll make the decision.”
Schmid said he expects Dempsey to play, but probably not 90 minutes. He wasn’t ready to say if Dempsey will start and come off early, or make his Sounders debut off the bench.
The coach also was vague on how he plans to incorporate Dempsey into an increasingly healthy club that has gone 2-0-1 over its past three with its front two lines already accommodating forwards Obafemi Martins and Eddie Johnson, and midfielders Mauro Rosales, Osvaldo Alonso, Brad Evans and Lamar Neagle.
“He’s going to be on the attacking part of the field, and he’s a player that will orchestrate the game for us,” Schmid said of Dempsey. “But, he’s also a player that can finish. He’s going to be a very vital cog to our game, and our game is going to flow through him, in certain aspects. And, it’s going to be important for him to spread the ball to the Obas and the Eddies and the Neagles and all the other people on the field who need the ball at the right time.”
Even in his first training session, Dempsey impressed his teammates with the talent that has made him the second-leading goal scorer in U.S. national team history and the highest-scoring American in English Premier League history.
“He finishes everything,” said All-Star rookie defender DeAndre Yedlin, who surrendered his No. 2 jersey to Dempsey. “There was a drill, and Sigi was telling us to get in for rebounds. I was his partner, and I didn’t even go in for rebounds because I knew it was going to go in anyway. He finishes everything. It’s amazing. I’ve never really seen anything like it.”
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