The Seattle Sounders are used to long trips, but the one they’re on now is different.
When the Sounders play an East Coast team, it usually follows a cross-country plane ride a couple of days in advance. That was the case before their Saturday match at New England — but not for their Wednesday match at D.C. United.
The Sounders planned this one out as a single two-game trip. They didn’t return home after their 2-1 loss to the Revolution, but instead remained out east. They remained in Massachusetts through Monday morning before heading to Washington, D.C. They even had enough time to do a little sightseeing around the nation’s capital Monday before final game preparations Tuesday.
“A little bit easier, a little bit awkward,” coach Sigi Schmid said. “There’s always pluses and minuses. Playing Saturday-Wednesday is much better than having to go Wednesday-Saturday.”
That’s because this timing paired equally rested teams. On Saturday, the Revolution had the same week between games as the Sounders. And now United heads into this match on equally short rest after their 1-0 win at Kansas City on Saturday.
That was United’s first win in six games on the road, and it puts them one up on the Sounders who are 0-4-1 away from home and looking to revert closer to their usual road form at RFK Stadium. In their expansion 2009 season, the Sounders went 5-5-5 on the road. They were 6-6-3 in 2010, 9-3-5 in 2011, 4-4-9 in 2012, 5-10-2 in 2013, 8-6-3 in the Supporters’ Shield 2014 season, and 4-9-4 last season.
That’s 41-43-31 over their first seven seasons. Schmid generally credits the road success to maintaining the same tactical approach his teams play at home. He believes that’s been the case again this season, although the results haven’t come.
“I think our routine on the road has been decent,” he said. “With the exception of the Colorado game, I think we’ve been in games. Even in Dallas I think we were in the game. It’s just a matter of what we’ve been talking about: finishing our opportunities … and hopefully the dam will break.”
Winning at home tends to be easier for most clubs around the world, and across most sports. Travel can be stressful. Hotels aren’t home. The stadiums and pitches are less familiar. And conventional wisdom is that home teams often get more calls — with the New England match doing nothing to disprove the notion.
Sounders’ veteran Herculez Gomez notes that all that — but even multiplied by the geography of MLS.
“There’s not one league round the world that has to deal with the travel issues that we have to deal with,” he said. “In Mexico our longest flight was when I was in (Tijuana) and we had to go play in Chiapas maybe three hours and you’d go one time zone. Other than that, it was an hour flight everywhere else. Here, you can go Los Angeles to New York, it’s a five and a half hour flight across three time zones. … That can take a toll.”
The Sounders saved air miles by staying on the East Coast. And in D.C. they will face a club that at 4-5-4 has its own share of troubles.
They’ll also play in a former NFL and MLB stadium where United has drawn 15,714 on an average game day and could struggle to reach even that on a week night. However, the Sounders are 4-7-1 and scraping their bellies along the bottom of the MLS Western Conference. Schmid believes they should bring their own energy.
“Nobody should have difficulty getting fired up,” he said, “because we need to win games.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
