Sounders return home for a day match against the Colorado Rapids

By Money Mike


The Seattle Sounders return home to their natural confines after drawing last weekend. The Colorado Rapids make their first of two trips here in the Emerald City because of the unbalanced schedule that was put into place by the league this offseason. The Rapids come in to this match at 3-2 in this young season. The lost their last match 2-0 on the road to their Rocky Mountain rivals Real Salt Lake and all of their trips to Seattle so far have been unsuccessful. The Sounders hope that trend doesn't change tomorrow. Kickoff time is at 1pm and will be aired on KONG TV and live on ROOT Sports for people outside the Seattle area.

This will be the first trip to Seattle for Brian Mullan since breaking Steve Zakuani's leg last season when these two clubs met at Colorado. Seattle won the match, but they sort of lost their focus because Zakuani's injury was so disturbing. It was the same challenge as about five years ago during an English Premier League match when Edurado da Silva during his time with Arsenal had to sit out for about 12 months, except that challenge was somewhere near his left ankle but the Impact was still the same. Hopefully you guys understood that I completely went off on Brian Mullan when I recapped that road match last year, especially because of this quote from him, "It's a tackle that I've done hundreds of times and would probably do again."

When I heard him say that, I was so pissed because he apologized prior to that and hearing that crap just made it hard for me to believe that he was sorry for his challenge. What happened initially was that he was looking for a foul because he felt like he was held by Tyson Wahl, who now plays for the Montreal Impact, but the referee didn't give it to him. But there was no excuse for the challenge. Studs were up, two footed, and you could hear the impact on that play. I mean you could hear his leg break from your living room almost all the way to you porch. Bottomline is, that injury was so disturbing the media shouldn't have shown any pictures or video replays of it. On the recap, yeah, there was a lot of profanity and not much detail. The reason for that was because I was in a lot of distress as were the players and the rest of the Sounder nation and I remember chatting with Miguel Montano about that on Facebook, asking him if he saw that. And he told me that he did, and the main reason is because he was on the 18-man squad for that match so he basically saw it with his own eyes. Despite that, the Sounders stood tall and finished 2nd in the West and led the league in Goals Scored. But we'll see how the fans react when Brian Mullan takes the field with the rest of the Colorado Rapids.


Injury report:

Colorado Rapids - Speaking of the Rapids, here's their injury report. Veterans Jamie Smith and Pablo Mastroeni as well as young Anthony Wallace are out for this match. Conor Casey (left achillies tear) and Eddie Ababio (concussion) are both listed as questionable. Ababio who was Colorado's first round pick last year has made one playoff appearance but has yet to make regular season appearance. Ross LaBauex is dealing with a Sports Hernia and is listed as probable.

Seattle Sounders FC - For the Sounders, of course we have Josh Ford, Michael Tetteh, Steve Zakuani and Babayele Sodade out. Backup goalkeeper Andrew Weber will be out four weeks with a left ankle sprain. That now leaves with our no. 4 goalkeeper Bryan Meredith as our backup to Michael Gspurning. Mauro Rosales and Adam Johansson are listed as questionable but Sigi Schmid feels it doesn't make sense to rush them back due to the fact that the Sounders have a bye next week before they travel to Chicago on the 28th of April. So you can count Rosales and Johansson as out for this match.