A Kick in the Holiday Season

The MLS might take a break in the middle of the playoffs for the sake of international fútbol, but the U.S. Women’s National Team has a tough run in December, packing four games into eleven days for the 2014 Brasilia International Tournament.

That said, up in the Pacific Northwest fans are preparing for Sunday night’s showdown in Carson when Sounders FC will meet L.A. Galaxy in the first leg of their Western Conference Final match. Their last meeting was less than a month ago, with the Seattle club taking a 2-0 win and also the Supporters’ Shield, much to the delight of over fifty-seven thousand fans at CenturyLink Field.

Meanwhile, Don Ruiz offers the latest preview of Sunday’s big game:

The Seattle Sounders would be notably short of their best without forward Clint Dempsey and defender DeAndre Yedlin, just as the Los Angeles Galaxy wouldn’t look the same without goals-leader Robbie Keane.

Those realities led Major League Soccer to schedule a break between its conference semifinal and final rounds, going dark during a two-week window for international play.

For the USA, that window closed Tuesday with a 4-1 loss to Ireland in Dublin. The USA played without MLS stars Dempsey, Yedlin and New England midfielders Jermaine Jones and Lee Nguyen. Dempsey wasn’t called for either of the United States friendlies during the MLS break, while the others were released after the first match last week — a 2-1 loss to Colombia — so that they could spend this week in playoff preparations with their club teams. Ireland did the same with Keane.

“It’s good,” Sounders coach Sigi Schmid said of Yedlin’s early return this week. “Obviously they have Robbie Keane back as well, so it’s the same for everybody. It’s good that (U.S. national team coach Jurgen Klinsmann) allowed those guys … to return after the game. That’s what we thought was going to happen, and that happened.”

While Clint Dempsey acknowledges feeling “pretty beat up, pretty tired” from all the running around, DeAndre Yedlin—who will play next season with Tottenham Hotspur—says he’s ready, citing the one asset he has over the veteran superstar: youth.

An Accomplishment, or, More Soccer

When did we become a sports blog?

Or maybe not. Still, though, this happened:

Congratulations to the Seattle Sounders.

On Saturday afternoon they captured their first-ever Supporters’ Shield trophy after securing the best record in the 2014 MLS regular season (20-10-4, 64 pts.). The Sounders beat the LA Galaxy 2-0 in front of 57,673 fans at CenturyLink Field in a match televised on NBC.

The match was a winner-take-all decider for the trophy, as the LA Galaxy could have claimed an MLS-record fifth Shield had they been able to defeat the Sounders.

As it stands, the Sounders are still very much on track for an unprecedented treble of trophies: the Supporters’ Shield, MLS Cup and the US Open Cup, which they won in September.

It seemed worth mentioning.

And, yes, you read that attendance number correctly.

Talk about support.

Congratulations, indeed, to Seattle Sounders FC as they move on in pursuit of their first MLS Championship.

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MLS Soccer. “Seattle Sounders FC capture first-ever MLS Supporters’ Shield with victory over LA Galaxy”. 25 October 2014.