OK, OK, so not every player is hurt, but the Sounders certainly are beat up at the midway point of the season. But more on that in a moment, first on the team’s good news from Monday: rookie defender DeAndre Yedlin, who just turned 20 last week, was named to the MLS All Star team. Yedlin was one of the two “Commissioner’s Picks” on the 18-man roster, and he becomes the first rookie selected to the game since 2005 rookie of the year Michael Parkhurst.
The MLS All Stars will play Italian club AS Roma on July 31 in Kansas City.
“I never really expected any of this,” said Yedlin, who is from Shoreline and played at Seattle’s O’Dea High School. “Of course I wanted it, but I never really expected it. To come in here and make the strides I’ve made and eventually achieving a spot on the All Star team, it’s amazing and it’s humbling, but like I said before, there’s still things I need to work on and I’m just going to continue to do that.”
As for the injuries, Sigi Schmid said, “In five years here in Seattle, it’s probably the worst injury run that we’ve had, cumulatively.”
Seattle went into last weekend’s game minus several key players, including forward Obafemi Martins (calf), midfielder Shalrie Joseph (calf) and winger Steve Zakuani, who is recovering from sports hernia surgery. Backup goalkeeper Marcus Hahnemann is also out with a hamstring injury, leading to the signing of Andrew Weber to serve as a backup last week, and midfielders Andy Rose and Alex Caskey are also recovering from injuries.
Then things got worse in Saturday’s 1-0 loss with goalkeeper Michael Gspurning (wrist/forearm), midfielder Brad Evans (ribs) and defender Djimi Traore (hamstring).
Schmid said Gspurning still needs to see a hand specialist to know the long-term prognosis, but admitted that “this weekend does not look good for him, for sure.”
On some of the other injuries, Schmid said, “Brad Evans was still pretty sore today, got a little better as he trained, but he still has to get an MRI to get final answers on where he’s at. Djimi Traore we kept inside with his hamstring, and it’s more day-to-day, week-to-week type of thing.”
“Oba trained today. We had Oba in the first part of training, then I pulled him out—I had seen enough from him today. He should be able to do a little bit more tomorrow, and Shalrie was still inside today.”
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