The gates of Starfire Sports Arena must be white hot by now from the friction of so many Sounders fans pressing into its intimate confines. In the last two days it saw the senior Sounders defeat Atlanta to advance in the US Open Cup and the Sounders Women play their home opener in front of 4500 fans. And tonight it'll host a Sounders Reserve match which has had its interest level suddenly ratched up to 11 with the news today that Steve Zakuani is expected to play. That would be his first competitive game action since his leg was broken in a game against the Colorado Rapids in April of last year.

The opponent tonight will be rivals Vancouver Whitecaps, and some have expressed skepticism about whether Zakuani should be playing in a game that could get heated. I think that's probably too much fretting, given that Steve's chance of reinjury is quite low. Bone breaks, once they heal, tend to leave the bone actually stronger, and the nerve damage from his compartment syndrome might affect his ability, but it's not an imminent threat of reinjury. And while it's been confirmed he's likely to play, no one said anything about him starting. If he gets in 10 minutes at the end of the match, that would probably be a successful outcome all around without any real risks, regardless of the opponent.

The nature of that opponent is open to some question. This is the 'reserve' Whitecaps team, but thanks to the international break the senior team hasn't played in over a week and isn't scheduled to play again for another week. So don't be surprised to be some high quality 'reserves' in action. The Sounders don't have that luxury, as the US Open Cup is giving them a regular schedule of games. This is the end of Sigi's declared 'Opportunity Week' and after some of the rotational players like Alex Caskey, Andy Rose, and Sammy Ochoa seized that opportunity on Wednesday, it'll likely be up to the deeper roster players like Mike Seamon and Servando Carrasco to take their turns tonight.

The match will be broadcast in audio only on SoundersFC.com, but admission is free (with a suggested donation to the Sounders' charity partners) so there's no reason not to fill up those seats for a third consecutive night and give Steve some love when he takes the field again.

Tonight the Sounders Women play their first competitive match of the season at Starfire after picking up a road win against Vancouver in their opener. With the team is the full contingent of national team players, who've rushed back from a friendly with China to take part in the home opener.

This is the middle match in great stretch for Starfire, with the senior Sounders winning the US Open Cup match last night, the Sounders Women kicking off tonight, and the Reserves kick off tomorrow with the potential of a Steve Zakuani sighting.

It's a good night for the first match of the strongest lineup with points on the line, since they'll be taking on one of the division favorites in the Colorado Rush, who have won their first three games and have yet to give up a goal. I expect Alex Morgan and Sydney Leroux will have something to say about that by the time the night is over. And if the Rush want to add to their 6 league goals, they'll have to do it through Hope Solo.

There'll be a stream on USL Live, and soundermom and I will have some play by play. #EBFG

Hulk! Herculez! Neymar! uh. . Bradley!

In a minor appetizer to tonight's important match, the US is hosting Brazil on a football field. After trouncing Scotland in their last match, I'm sure the US is hoping to just hold on and maybe gut out a draw against the dangerous Brazilians. Match is on ESPN and ESPN3 online.

Since the last edition of the crunchy power rankings I've made some significant modifications. First, based on some work I did looking into extreme differences in strike rates between New York and Toronto, I've decided to switch from net shots in the box to net shots on goal. Based on last season's stats, they're actually equally correlated with PPG, so it's a fine substitution. It remains to be seen whether New York's extremely high (and Toronto's extremely low) rates of goals per shot can be maintained long term, but for now I'm going to help take them into account by shifting away from shots and into shots on goal. Note that this still doesn't fully account for New York's results and we sill rank them low (13th, in fact), in part because they're also converting an abnormally high number of shots on goal into goals (meaning they aren't getting saved or blocked). Again, it's possible that this is largely luck and it's possible that their shots are especially unsaveable. I'll take this step for now and we'll see how it goes long term. It's worth noting that in their one MLS match since I looked at the stats, New York had a pedestrian strike rate of 6%. Small sample, but maybe the start of a regression.

Second, I've reweighted the stats in the final score. The previous even weighting was based on an error in my original calculation. In fact, net box shots (and now net shots on goal) should be weighted as much as offensive passing and duels combined, with passing weighted a little higher than duels.

In other news, I'm sure there will be suspicions of homerism, because I have the Seattle Sounders ranked at #2. That's a climb from 3rd in the first rankings, despite the fact that Seattle's gone on their worst run of the season. But has the run really been that bad? By points per game, yes. But consider that they generally dominate every game they're in in chances. In the Columbus game, the Crew had exactly 2 shots on goal, and they both went in, and that was the winning margin. That's not very likely. And in the crunchy power rankings, we don't rely on the unlikely. We just look at how the team is playing and how that correlates to long term success. Also, the team ranked 1st is probably a big surprise. Full table and some more analysis below the jump:

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Tomorrow night Starfire will be a-rockin as the Seattle Sounders take on the Atlanta Silverbacks, but the 3rd round of the US Open Cup actually starts tonight with 28 of the 32 remaining teams in action. All of (US-based) MLS will be entering this round, thanks the the elimination of the weird play-in bracket for the top pro division. So the night is pregnant with delightful upset possibilities. Many teams will be without their best players, including the LA Galaxy, who are losing almost an entire squad worth to injury and international duty, and who will be traveling for the match despite attempting to buy hosting rights.

The best rundown of the matches and available media coverage is at thecup.us. The first matches are at 4pm, when DC United kicks off against the Richmond Kickers and the New England Revolution takes on the Harrisburg City Islanders.

In the Pickem contest, bmvaughn and Dizzo are tied for the lead at 10 and yours truly and mrbs are a point back at 9. Derek R's spreadsheet is here for checking your scores. Unfortunately, I didn't take into account USSoccer's preference for regional brackets and I picked the Timbers, the Sounders, and Cal FC, who are all in the same 4-team region. On the plus side, I've got a pretty good chance of getting two points out of the deal...

The Sounders draw at Chivas on Friday wasn't the result we all hoped for, but it definitely wasn't a bad outcome either. Earning a 1-1 draw on the road, especially when they had to come back from a deficit, against an improving Chivas team that has always played Seattle tough at the end of a grueling stretch of games — in the long run, I think that's a fine result. And from there the weekend just got better.

Earlier in the day the US national team frankly destroyed visiting Scotland 5-1 in their first friendly of the international break. Even the one opposing goal came via a US own goal off Geoff Cameron. Scotland is an enormously productive well of coaching talent, but their football is in crisis, with an underperforming national team, and Rangers having gone into administration.

Even earlier that morning the Sounders Pre-Academy team kicked off as part of the Portland Timbers Friendship Cup. Updates were only on Twitter (and those who happened to go), and they beat British Columbia Provincial 3-0. Sunday morning the next match for the Pre-Academy kicked off — against the Timbers. The kids represented Seattle well and held the game to 0-0 in the enemy's den.

Then we turned to the women as the national team women took on China in Philadelphia and the Sounders Women (devoid of their national teamers) simultaneously played away in Vancouver in their season opener. The USWNT fell behind early, but came back to win 4-1 thanks in large part to Alex Morgan, who finished with two goals and an assist.

And the Sounders Women turned out to be just fine without their superstar contingent of national team players, as they relied on Mexican national team player Veronica Perez as they beat rivals Vancouver Whitecaps 2-0.

So that's no losses in 6 matches, including 4 wins. Not a bad haul for Seattle (and US) soccer fans. And if you want the weekend of soccer to continue into the holiday, the Pre-Academy is kicking off their final match of the Friendship Cup, which you can follow on @SoundersAcademy on Twitter.

Update: I foolishly left out the Sounders U23s, who picked up a 0-0 draw on Friday night versus Victoria and beat Fraser Valley 2-1 away on Sunday. That's 8 without a loss (though the Pre-Academy did lose their final match of their tournament today)

The Sounders Women at the US National Women (but I repeat myself) are in action today. The more famous half of the roster is playing with their national team cohorts against China in a friendly. There's a livestream on the ussoccer.com site.

Meanwhile, the more college-oriented half of the roster is kicking off the first match of the regular season against rival Whitecaps FC in Vancouver. For coverage of that you'll probably have to check in with @SoundersWomen on twitter (or @WhitecapsFC as a fallback).

Seattle's run of games over the last 4 weeks has been epic. Since a two week break in April, at the end of the day the team will have played 8 games in 29 days. Seven games played just in the month of May. That run started off well with home wins against the Los Angeles Galaxy and Philadelphia Union, but since then the team has sputtered.

We saw it in the first half at FC Dallas, when the team played poorly against an awful team, but Fredy Montero came in as a halftime sub to turn it around. Then we saw it in a home loss to Real Salt Lake, in which the team had the better play but couldn't score. Then in Vancouver another terrible first half saved in a rejuvenated second half. And then at home against Columbus, we showed little offensive creativity and despite at times dominating, we gave up 2 goals on 2 shots on goal and couldn't find a way to score.

The run ends tonight at Chivas USA. Sure, we have a home match against the Atlanta Silverbacks in US Open Cup play next week, but we should absolutely not be saving players for a home match against one of the worst teams in the second division. Losing this match, or just playing poorly, would leave a bad taste in our mouths until we pick up MLS play again in mid-June against Montreal. That's a long time to have to stew over a loss.

And unfortunately, Chivas is a team that's inexplicably played the Sounders well. Despite only being a playoff team once in the three years that Seattle's been in the league, we have a drawn record at 2-2-3. That's a better record than a lot of very good teams have against Seattle. They've been especially tough in Carson, where we finally beat them for the first time in 4 tries in the last regular season match of 2011 (in which Mauro Rosales reinjured his knee before the playoff matchup with RSL and. . anyway, moving on..)

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Referring to Abbott's earlier post, Osvaldo Alonso is one player who's never been afraid to talk about opponents' mothers, at least metaphorically. Even when the rest of the team seems listless and passive, he brings his hard bite to defensive midfield, game in and game out. But likely in large part due to the frustrations building in a bad home loss to the Columbus Crew, Alonso bit too hard and went in for a dangerous, ill-advised tackle on Cole Grossman on a 50/50 ball and though he was left on the field at the time, today the league has suspended him for two games, strongly implying that it should have been a red card.

As a bit of extra flavor (and not that it makes the tackle any less bad) but I was 8 rows up from where Grossman came off the field after rolling around on the ground and he smiled and laughed at the fans who were booing him for timewasting.

The big question will be whether it's Andy Rose or Servando Carrasco who fills in at defensive midfield. Full release is below the jump.

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The MLS Players Union has once again released their league-wide salary data. I always feel a little awkward about this. How many other people have their salaries posted publicly? But hey, it's the union releasing it, so here we go.

The direct link to the PDF is here. You can see a list of the top earners here. It's interesting to note that those top earners have basically been total failures on the pitch this season. Thierry Henry at the top has been great, but 3 of the top 10 are on the 'worst team in the world' Toronto FC. Another 3 are on the LA Galaxy, who are passed out drunk in the basement of the Western Conference. Another is Kris Boyd on the Timbers, who are lying on top of the passed out Galaxy in the basement. And another is Rafa Marquez. That's 8 of the top 10 earners who you could replace with an Academy player and get just as much success. It's all the more gratifying that the Sounders don't involve themselves in that sort of business, despite their healthy revenue.

Speaking of the Sounders, here's our roster:

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When certain teams appear on the upcoming schedule, you feel a sense of — if not dread, then at least caution. There are teams that seem to always play Seattle tough and create an anxious, frustrating game. Perhaps for you that's the Los Angeles Galaxy or Real Salt Lake. Or even a team not as recently dominant, but who can still stymie the Sounders, like the San Jose Earthquakes.

The Columbus Crew are not one of those teams. Their name showing up on the schedule is like a breath of fresh spring air and a promise of fun for the whole family. Not only have we never lost to them in competitive play, but the wins have been some of the most memorable and joyous games in Seattle's short MLS history. It's like Christmas in summer.

Our first win against the Crew was in 2009, when we broke their 22 game home unbeaten streak thanks to Roger Levesque's first ever MLS goal and Schelotto's missed penalty. They went on to win the Supporters Shield that season, but we left a big thorn in their side. Then there was 2010, when we were all wondering whether newly acquired veteran European forward Blaise Nkufo was going to handle MLS play well enough to produce, and then he goes and scores a hat trick on Columbus in a 4-0 beatdown on the road. And last season I had to sneak away from a wedding to pick up the home match at half only to find that we'd already dropped 4 goals on them en route to a 6-2 thrashing, our most potent MLS match in history.

But even those pale to the US Open Cup final in 2010, just a couple of weeks after the Nkufo match, when Sanna Nyassi's implausible brace (including a deflected goal off of his knee) in front of both of my kids and my in-laws in the southeast corner meant that we'd be repeat Cup champions.

So you can understand that I get a little excited when the Crew come to town, or when we go to their town. Sure, we'll lose to them eventually. Just like we'll lose to the Chicago Fire eventually. But it'd take a lot of losing to make up for the joy that we've extracted from Columbus so far.

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This round the second and third tiers of the US Soccer pyramid enter the fray as NASL and USL Pro begin play. We're pretty much out of local teams until MLS joins in the next round, as the Kitsap Pumas were eliminated in the last round by Eric Wynalda's Cal FC and the Portland Timbers U23s were similarly upset by USASA's PSA Elite last week. Even the Real Colorado Foxes were upset by a USASA team, so the nearest team still in action might be Fresno.

The most interesting match will be between the Atlanta Silverbacks and the Georgia Revolution. Originally it was reported that Seattle would travel to Atlanta to play their third round match if the Silverbacks won. However, as we posted earlier it now sounds like Seattle may be hosting regardless. Anyway, the winner of that match will be our opponent.

The Sounder at Heart US Open Cup Pickem also enters its second round. Hardworking reader Derek R was kind enough to setup a spreadsheet to keep track of the scoring, which you can view here. Currently last year's winner Dizzo is tied on 7 points with mrbs, who went with an all-PDL strategy, perhaps on the assumption that at least one round of likely wins against amateur teams should rack up some points. Unfortunately for that strategy, there was a surprising number of upsets in round 1 that left the field of PDL teams smaller than you'd expect, and now they begin playing up against the big boys (meaning the boys who actually get paid). Last season's strong contender bmvaughn comes in at 3rd with 6 points and, most importantly, I'm in 4th with 5 points. Thanks for asking.

The round kicks off at 4pm, with the Atlanta/Georgia match kicking off at 4:30. Your best coverage is on TheCup.us. The NPSL Georgia Revolution are streaming the match. Crush their interwebs peoples.

Last week I started work on our crunchy power rankings and I noted that the biggest difference from what you'll see in a typical power rankings at this point in the season is that I had Toronto FC being an average team, rather than the hapless, impotent basement team that they are in the standings and pretty much every other list of teams in order of not-terribleness. Another team that was a bit of a surprise in the reverse direction was the New York Red Bulls, who are a hot team at the top of the Eastern Conference in the standings, but the crunchy power rankings have them as one of the worst teams in the league.

Now I want to go into some detail on why those two teams differ so much from where the stats-based rankings would have them and what it says about shot rates. First, without looking, guess which of those two teams has taken more shots this season, considering that Toronto has scored 7 goals and New York 25. Given the context of the question, you might guess something was up, but I think most people would guess New York. Actually, Toronto has taken 141 shots to New York's 134. We've talked a lot on the site over the years about shots, and about how the rate of shots that are on goal and the rate of shots on goal that become goals generally regress to the mean, and so using shots as a measure of chance creation is a fine approximation. Here's an article I wrote on the topic last year.

But Toronto and New York have become extreme opposite outliers on the rates of shots that are on goal (and become goals) to the point that I'm not sure it's tenable anymore to assume that they will regress. A useful rule of thumb is that around 1/3 of shots are on goal and about 1/10 shots becomes a goal. These guidelines are close enough in MLS this season, which as seen a total of 2729 shots, 942 shots on goal, and 266 goals. So about 1 in 2.9 shots are on goal and about 1 in 10.3 shots goes in.

But the New York Red Bulls have taken 134 shots and scored 25 goals. That's a strike rate of 18.7%, almost twice the 10% you'd expect. Toronto, on the other hand, has scored 7 goals on 141 shots for a strike rate of 0.05%. Exactly half what you'd expect. Here's a full table of strike rates across the league:

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Once again, this afternoon Fredy Montero demonstrated that for however good he is in the run of league play (and he's very good) he brings out something special in Cup competitions. We've seen it in the CONCACAF Champions League, we've seen it in the US Open Cup, and now we've seen it two years in a row versus the Vancouver Whitecaps in Cascadia Cup play. His dancing footwork at the top of the box in the final minute of regulation led to an open shot, just as it did in Vancouver last season, and this time it saved a point for Seattle.

The Sounders were outplayed through large stretches of today's match. Particularly in the first half there was a lack of midfield presence with Alex Caskey filling in for Brad Evans in center. But it was a massive breakdown on the right side of defense that allowed Alain Rochat to start an overlapping run at the center stripe, receive the ball on the run, and dribble unmolested all the way to the 6 yard box to deposit it comfortably past Bryan Meredith inside the far post.

There could have been a lot more, but the Whitecaps — in particular rookie Darren Mattocks — were wasteful with their frequent chances. And in the second Seattle took over after Sigi inserted Alex Rose for Caskey and Eddie Johnson pushed higher up to create more open spaces in the middle. The equalizer came off of a Johnson header thanks to a perfect cross from Mauro Rosales (who otherwise didn't have a particularly good day).

Vancouver scored again against the run of play on a fluky free kick through the box that was either untouched or got a glancing chest. In either case, Meredith was screened and saw the ball late and it drifted into the net. The substitution of Eric Hassli for Mattocks generated a few more Caps chances, but Montero's late backbreaker was the final word in the match, except for the thousands of Sounders fans who made the trek north and — if the sound on TV was any indication — drowned out the home fans over 90 minutes with relentless support.

An away point, another wondrous Montero goal, another Johnson goal, nobody injured, and the fans made themselves and the team proud. Not perfect, but not a bad afternoon.

Last year, the first MLS edition of the Cascadia Cup worked out quite nicely for the Seattle Sounders. Two early home draws — thanks consecutively to a late Futty Danso goal for the Portland Timbers in the pissing rain and an incredible stoppage-time goal of the year candidate for the Vancouver Whitecaps from Eric Hassli — created early drama. But then Seattle claimed the Cup emphatically with two away wins, including a competing goal of the year candidate from Fredy Montero in Vancouver to seal the deal.

Unfortunately, last season might have been both the first and last Cascadia Cup competition with a balanced schedule, as MLS' new leaguewide unbalanced schedule has tossed all of the smaller Cup competitions that rely on balanced league play like yachts in a storm. This season the Sounders play each of their Cascadia rivals twice away and only once at home, so the degree of difficulty is high for holding the Cup another season. And yet, based on last year's results and the history of the Sounders overall, playing on the road is not an insurmountable challenge.

For Vancouver, this season is less about Cup glory and more about recovering from a very disappointing year one in MLS. At the end of last season, the divergent courses of the two Cascadia expansion teams were clear to everyone. Vancouver, focused on long-term success and continuity with its existing club and academy structure, was doomed to years of irrelevance, so the narrative went. And the Timbers, with a willingness to load the roster with foreign attacking talent, was more competitive out of the gate, coming close to a playoff berth in year one.

But it only took one offseason for the script to flip. Now it's the Timbers who are approaching midseason at the bottom of the table and the Whitecaps who flew out of the gate, not giving up a goal in 4 and a half games to start the season.

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One topic that we've covered for years here on Sounder at Heart is the outsized impact of luck on the result of a single game of soccer. In our series on parity in the 2010 offseason we pointed out that in terms of game parity — that is, the likelihood that a worse team will beat a better team due to luck — soccer is rivaled among major sports only by baseball. Major League Baseball overcomes this effect through sheer volume, with 162 games a season meaning that even a large luck factor in a single game will even out and be overcome by skill through a large number of repetitions. But soccer games are only played once or twice a week and it can take a while for those luck factors to even out. Consider that the St Louis Cardinals, who would go on to win the World Series, lost 8 out of 11 games in one stretch in August. Now imagine if that 11 games was a third of their season.

To account for that, we like to look at stats that are more numerous and more consistent than goals to get a sense for how teams are really playing. Thanks to Opta's coverage of the league over the last two seasons we have a wealth of statistics to examine, so I decided to draw up a power rankings system that's based not on the standings or the subjective eye but on those stats that correlate well with winning over the long run.

After a lot of stat grinding, I've found a good set of stats that don't overlap too much but correlate well with goals over time. They're shots in the box, duels, and passing percentage in the offensive third. These are all stats that correlate well with winning (between 0.5 and 0.6 each over the course of a season) and they're nicely divided over different areas of the game. Duels Won will account for teams excellent in defense, Offensive Pass Pct accounts for teams excellent in playmaking, and Shots in the Box accounts for teams good in the attack.

Note that we've tracked net shots for a while now, but it turns out that net shots in the box correlates even better with results and helps discount teams that generate a lot of low-danger shots when they're pressing for an equalizer (or if they just like to do that, like Kansas City in 2009).

So my methodology is to calculate the net value of each of those stats (team value minus the opponent's value), weight it for recency using a linear weighting (formally, if a team has played n games, the first game is weighted as 1/n, second as 2/n, etc until the most recent game is n/n, or 1), and normalize the values. In the end, a team gets 100 points if they're first in all 3 stats down to 0 points for being last in all 3.

The results, including some surprises, are below the jump.

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There were hints in the last match at FC Dallas that the team was starting to feel the effects of its run of 2 games a week for weeks on end. The first half of that match was as bad as we've seen the team in some time, but the memory of that was wiped away by Fredy Montero's impact as a halftime sub. But Real Salt Lake isn't that depleted FC Dallas side and this match was one more in that run.

In this case the first half was actually much better. Seattle had all of the chances, including an Eddie Johnson scamper into the box between three defenders that ended with a clean shot, but one that went 30 yards over the goal as Johnson opted to hit it as hard as humanly possible rather than steer it to goal or pass it off to one of the 2 or 3 Sounders crashing the box next to him.

It was the second half where the team just lost the plot. Occasional good runs into the wings weren't rewarded by other players making runs into the box. The crossing was erratic to bad. One of too many midfield turnovers resulted in RSL's lone goal when Espindola ran onto a through ball and poked it around a Seattle defender to wrong-foot Meredith.

The Lakers were clearly satisfied with a 1 goal lead as they dropped back into a defensive bunker soon after scoring. That didn't help Seattle's offensive rhythm, and even a second half substitution of the newly returned Alvaro Fernandez wasn't enough to create any good chances.

The officiating was horrid and random, but Seattle lost this one tonight on their own merits with wasteful possession and too little imaginative spark. We can hope that it was the fatigue more than anything and a long-awaited weeklong rest until next weekend's Cascadia Cup opener in Vancouver will heal the damage.

The Seattle Sounders are very rarely embarrassed in a match. Sure, they occasionally lose. Every team loses games (though you might have forgotten that during the current run of wins). But it's not often that after a match the team and fans know that the team wasn't good enough to compete that day. In fact, it's happened 4 times. In 2010, they lost 4-0 at home to the Los Angeles Galaxy in the middle of an awful first half of that season. The fans were issued a refund. In 2011, they lost 7-0 to Manchester United in a friendly. There's some dispute as to whether this was really embarrassing at all, given that it was an exhibition game and the worst part came when our C team was playing against Wayne Rooney. But the front office was clearly unhappy with it, as were many fans. And this season the team lost 6-1 in their second leg match against Santos Laguna, a result tempered by the fact that most of it came at the end when the match was already over and the fact that Santos is and should be a lot better than any MLS team.

But arguably the worst of all of them was last season's first round playoff match in Sandy, Utah, when the team needed to go into a difficult environment, play disciplined soccer, and get out with a tie or a 1-goal deficit they could make up under the impetus of 36,000 fans at home. Instead they finished the leg down by three goals, and a solid 2-0 effort at home wasn't enough to prevent the 3rd consecutive first round playoff loss. This will be the first meeting between the teams since that series and I'm confident the desire to balance the books will give more meaning to this game than your usual first half weekend match. And the fact that it's a match between the two top teams in the standings adds a little something as well.

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Last season loyal reader bmvaughn rode the brief but memorable Cinderella run of the Richmond Kickers and some other quality lower division teams to an early points lead, but he couldn't overcome the fact that the (understandably) most picked team among contestants went on to win the Cup for the third season in a row and so the title went to site writer Dizzo.

This season the format of the real competition changes a bit and so the format of our little side competition will adapt as well. Most notably, every MLS team enters the competition proper, with an additional round in the tournament to make up for the extra teams. And NASL returns the competition after sitting out a year, though they and USL-Pro enter in the second round.

Here are the rules for this season's pickem:

• Pick a roster of teams by leaving a comment with your team list on this thread before kickoff of the first match of the first round on May 15. That's next Tuesday.
• You have a budget of 42 credits to spend on teams.
• Team cost is based on the team's league, as follows:
  • MLS: 10
  • NASL/USL Pro: 5
  • PDL: 3
  • NPSL: 2
  • USASA/USCS: 1
• You get 1 point for each win by one of your teams. Note that unlike last season, we don't shift to 2 points a win in later rounds. The extra round with MLS teams eliminates the need for this.

There will be a prize this season, which has yet to be determined. But to set your expectations, think more 'scarf' and less 'new car'. A list of teams as well as the matchups for the first two rounds are available here

The Seattle Sounders have deservedly risen to the top most of the power rankings floating around the MLS media world after winning 3 games in 8 days, but with that honor comes the significant caveat that 6 of their 8 games (and all but one of their wins) have come at home. And their two road games were at D.C United and Chicago Fire, two teams not playing well even in the relatively weak East. So FC Dallas, who jostled with the Sounders and LA Galaxy for top of the table through most of 2011, should be prepared to be Seattle's first significant road test.

Except they're conspiring to downgrade that test from a midterm to a pop quiz. First, Dallas is playing on even shorter rest than Seattle after playing on Sunday night, and their players should be even more fatigued given that they had to do extra running playing 9 on 11.

But fatigue isn't their only problem. If you asked knowledgeable fans who Dallas' most important field players are this season, you'd probably get, in some order, Brek Shea, David Ferreira, newly signed striker Blas Perez, team leader Daniel Hernandez in the midfield, and George John and captain Ugo Ihemelu on the back line. But when the match kicks off under the lights of what was once Pizza Hut Park, few if any of those players will be on the pitch.

Ferreira is out at least for a few more weeks after foot surgery in April. Perez and Hernandez were both red carded in that debacle of a match against the Colorado Rapids on Sunday and will be suspended for at least this match. Ihemelu is out with a concussion. And Brek Shea is questionable attempting to return from turf toe, a notoriously nagging injury that he suffered a couple of weeks ago. And any depth they'd hope to draw on has been compromised by injuries to Ricardo Villar, Andrew Wiederman, Carlos Rodriguez, and Bobby Warshaw. The matchday roster may have to be built by inserting whatever warm body comes along, which might be why they're likely starting Portland Timbers castoff midfielder James Marcelin after only a week on the club.

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We're overdue in taking a look at how the Seattle Sounders youth are faring in the Academy. Last season was Seattle's first in the USSDA League and, surprising to no one, both the U18 and U16 teams were very competitive from day one. Both teams won the Northwest Division and made the Academy playoffs, with the U16s advancing to Finals Week and eventually finishing 5th in the country out of 78 teams.

This season the U16 team is picking up where last season's left off despite the very competitive Vancouver Whitecaps joining the division. Seattle is the top goalscoring team in the division running away with 42 goals — Vancouver is second with 30 — and has allowed only 14 — second best to the Whitecaps' 8. The team has already clinched a playoff berth with 3 games left in the season and is competing with only Vancouver for the division title. That may be decided on the final game on June 3 when those two teams face off in Vancouver.

It's notable that they've accomplished all of this without one of their best players. Goalkeeper Paul Christensen is nominally a Sounders U16 player but he hasn't actually suited up for the team because he's been with the U17 national team in training and a series of international tours. You can catch up with that team in this article from TopDrawerSoccer (Christensen is the keeper in the accompanying photo). Their next action is a May 10 game against the Dynamo Academy.

The U18 team has comparatively struggled as they attempt to recover from a pitiless run from December to April that saw them lose 6 of their 8 games. Fortunately most of those losses came out of divisional play, which means they still have an outside shot to make the playoffs as one of the top two teams in the division. First is out of reach as only one divisional game remains and Vancouver is 4 points ahead. But they're 3 points behind De Anza Force and 3 behind them in goal differential, so a win in the final divisional game against Vancouver and a Force loss to Cal Odyssey could put them through.

Both teams play at Starfire this weekend in non-divisional games against LA Galaxy and Chivas USA. No playoff implications, but it's the last chance to see them this season and I'm sure they'd appreciate your support.

As they say, 'they could have scored 5', but they didn't. They scored one on a technically perfect shot from Mauro Rosales thanks to a perfect pass from Fredy Montero. Other than that, young Alex Caskey had two great looking curlers from the left side, one of which went just wide and one saved by Zach MacMath. He also shanked a wipe open opportunity in the box handed to him by Montero. Andy Rose hit the woodwork, which was a surprise both because he's an unknown player and because he arguably shouldn't have been in the game after avoiding a second yellow card early in the first half on a tackle that was almost certainly worth a yellow card (his post-game explanation being that the tackle that earned his first yellow card, really wasn't). Montero had a beautiful knuckleball in the box saved by MacMath and another chance go barely wide. And another chip hit the crossbar. And another, and another...

But they only needed one, because the Union offense is just awful. They tried to build counters on the occasional midfield turnover but had absolutely no idea where to run or where to pass the ball. The Seattle defense was stout in preventing any easy opportunities and Philadelphia was forced to take distant field-goal shots.

The Union continued their streak of not scoring more than a goal a game (or even one this time) and Seattle — with another shutout — continues a defensive streak that's going to have us reaching for the record books soon.

Winning with Reserves in midfield meant that Eddie Johnson and Brad Evans should be clear for the Wednesday match in Dallas as this crowded run of games continues, with perhaps an Alvaro Fernandez return from injury. Quotes after the jump.

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The Philadelphia Union followed a pretty typical expansion team trajectory. In their first season, they had a lot of talent but were really bad, because nobody knew how to play together. Then in their second season they gelled as a team and made the playoffs with a Goal Differential as good as Real Salt Lake's. And then, for some reason, they veered wildly off script and into a ditch as they decided in Year 3 they would go into rebuilding mode.

Just look at the roster from last year ordered by appearances and compare it to the team that started their last match against the San Jose Earthquakes. Ranked first is Sebastien Le Toux — also their leading scorer by a good margin — who was shipped to Vancouver for cash after he was shopped to Bolton in the EPL. Then begins a run of defenders in 2nd-4th (Danny Califf, Sheanon Williams, and Carlos Valdes) who started on Saturday. Fifth in 2011 appearances was Brian Carroll — out injured versus San Jose. Sixth: Justin Mapp, now in Montreal. Seventh: Danny Mwanga, started on the bench. Eighth: Faryd Mondragon, back to Colombia. Ninth: Roger Torres, injured. And so on.

Obviously the Union can't do anything about injuries (a truth the Sounders understand well), but the rotation of previous starters to the bench and out of the team has created a massive overhaul in the offense and midfield. With the relative stability in defense and the rebuilt offense, it's probably not a coincidence that their defense has been fine this year — with barely over a goal a game allowed — but they've struggled to score goals. They haven't scored more than 1 goal in a game all season.

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The starting lineup that the Seattle Sounders Women sent out onto the wet Starfire pitch this evening was the one that we all dreamed about when the preseason flurry of world class signings came to an end. In goal, Hope Solo. At forward, Alex Morgan and Sydney Leroux. In the midfield Keelin Winter, Megan Rapinoe, and Veronica Perez. In defense Stephanie Cox.

It was a star-studded lineup that was the primary reason that the 4,500 seat Starfire Stadium was packed to the rafters. But there was another reason, evidenced by the big swaths of purple cutting through the crowd. There was a large Husky contingent here and they were just as eager to see their team do well against those national team players.

Maybe it was that extra bit of fan support, or maybe they were just a better team, but the UW gave the Sounders more of a game than either Seattle U or SPU did in the first two despite Seattle having their best roster of the preseason on paper. That's not to say that the Huskies were dominating the play. Like their predecessors they were content to play 10 deep on defense and occasionally lob a hopeful ball to their lone striker. But they played with a harder edge (resulting in quite a few fouls) and didn't give Seattle many chances either. The best chance of the half was in its final seconds when Leroux uncorked a shot that forced a full stretch diving save from the Husky keeper.

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Tonight the Sounders Women play their final preseason game and once again the US National Team players who've been bringing attention and excitement to the team for the last few months will be suiting up in Rave Green.

In fact it might be the first game that all of those players are available. Last game Alex Morgan sat out with a minor injury and midfielder Megan Rapinoe had yet to join the team. But Rapinoe is now on the squad and we can hope Morgan is recovered, though we haven't received lineups yet. If any number of the nats play the Huskies can probably expect to face what the Falcons and Redhawks faced, which was a lot of goals and not much success on offense. The Sounders outscored those two by a combined 10-0, and I suspect Hope Solo would like to finish the preseason without giving up a goal.

One Huskies player who might not feel too bad about a Sounders win is Lindsay Elston, who plays for both teams. She'll be playing for UW tonight but moves over to the Sounders when the spring soccer season completes next week.

This game will be streamed USL Live, so even if you can't come down to Tukwila you can enjoy this last look at the Sounders Women before the season kicks off on May 27.

Where: Pressbox
Scarf: 2011 Sounder at Heart
Drinking: Hot dog sweat

Fredy Montero has scored a lot of goals for the Seattle Sounders. According to his Wikipedia page 44 in his just over 3 seasons in Seattle, and that sounds about right. But for me last night's 35 yard bomb into Bill Gaudette's top right corner stands above them all. Not only was the shot by itself stunning for its power, distance, and accuracy, but taken in context it meant a lot more. In the game context, it greatly increased our chances of beating the LA Galaxy, who've stymied us at home for years. And in a season context it finally broke the seal for Fredy, who has tried an array of shots so far — long and short, speculative and routine. But despite the fact that he began the 2012 campaign with a memorable chipped goal against Jaguares, he hadn't been able to find the net in MLS play — a fact that was clearly beginning to wear on him. Never mind all that. Now we can hope to see a free flow of goals, some of which might add to this list.

1. 5/3/12 vs LA Galaxy

Sure, you've watched it 50 times since yesterday, but the 51st viewing is the charm.

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Last season we remarked that the LA Galaxy were very much a team built to win in the short term. They had one of the oldest rosters in the league and the key players on the team did not look like they were planning on sticking around. Landon Donovan had proven himself in short stints in Europe and gave off the clear impression that he'd like to move his career to the EPL while he was still young enough to put some years into it. David Beckham was at the end of his much analyzed contract and was getting strong overtures from Europe during his many loan stints there. And Robbie Keane — the man they brought in to replace Edson Buddle — had played for 5 different teams in the span of 2 years and hardly looked like a player who wanted to settle into MLS long term.

And as the lights turned off on the 2011 season both ends of that prediction were looking good. The Galaxy had in fact won in the short term, earning their third MLS Cup and fourth Supporters Shield. And the team did begin to disassemble. Juninho, a crucial piece of their midfield, returned to Brazil. Donovan again suited up for Everton. Donovan Ricketts was sold to Montreal. Keane was loaned to Aston Villa. Beckham to PSG was all but a done deal.

But somewhere along the way the Galaxy decided that had one more one-more-year in them, and so Juninho was loaned back from Sao Paulo, the Beckham move to Ligue 1 fell through, and the Galaxy's European loan trio were recalled for another campaign. Unfortunately for them, Omar Gonzalez — a player who might be more important to the Galaxy on the field than any of the others — tore an ACL during his own trip to Europe and LA began the season with a woeful defense that allowed 11 goals in their first 5 games across CCL and MLS play — a stretch that included CCL elimination to Toronto FC and 3 losses in 4 MLS matches. A run of 4 consecutive games of giving up 1 goal is a greatly improved average, but they still have yet to earn a shutout this season.

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No team is as reliably almost-but-not-quite great as the Chicago Fire. After their MLS Cup winning expansion season in 1998 they made the playoffs in 10 of the next 11 seasons, but never won it again — a stretch that included 2 finals losses and a grueling 5-year run from 2005 to 2009 of losing in the conference finals 4 times. That might not seem like much of a sad-sack story to fans of Toronto FC — who have never made the playoffs — or fans of Chivas USA — who've never made it out of the first round in 7 years of trying — but there's a special agony for teams that look and feel like they've done everything to earn a spot at the top but keep coming up short. History does not remember the Buffalo Bills kindly.

Then again, after two years of not making the playoffs (including being the last team out in 2010 and the second to last out in 2011) a conference final loss might sound pretty attractive. Like many teams trying to recover past glory, they've turned to a coach that was around in the halcyon days. For Ben Olsen in D.C. United that tactic hasn't yet paid off, but the Fire turned to Frank Klopas, who scored the goal that won them the 1998 US Open Cup. Under Klopas the Fire won 7 of their final 10 games last season and have begun this season with only 1 loss in 5.

They've also just turned to Chris Rolfe, the onetime Fire mainstay at forward whose brief European adventure probably not coincidentally coincides with that two year run of Chicago not making the playoffs. Rolfe won't be starting this weekend, though that may actually be unfortunate for Seattle. New acquisitions, no matter how talented, often need some time to gel with a team and the Sounders could benefit from being the team he gets his gelling time against. Instead they'll likely be facing the speedy Oduro and Nyarko combination up top.

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A team with aspirations will obviously want to combine a good offense with a good defense. Scoring lots of goals and not allowing many is a pretty reliable recipe for success. But for the neutral or a casual soccer fan, the best combination might be a good offense and a bad defense. That will drive up the goal totals, and as much as we want fans to become more educated about the game and learn to appreciate all aspects of play, there's no question that goal scoring is something everyone can enjoy.

And one team that's definitely learned how to produce goals this season — both offensively and defensively — is the New York Red Bulls. Thierry Henry seems to have finally settled in and found his groove in North America and the New York Kenny Cooper is exactly what the Timbers were hoping for last season and never got. Meanwhile the defense is a shambles, with the injury to Wilman Conde and the introduction of rookie goalkeeper Ryan Meara contributing to 10 goals allowed — tied for third worst in the league.

If you take total goals per game (scored plus allowed) as a proxy for entertainment value, then the Red Bulls are leading the league by a long shot. And you'd be forgiven for thinking there might be a conspiracy afoot, since the team in second is the LA Galaxy and the league would desperately want the teams in the two largest media markets to be the most entertaining for potential new fans.

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