SEATTLE — Another weekend, another road trip to a sweltering Midwest city.
Kansas City is the destination this time for Seattle Sounders FC. With the weather forecast in the mid-90s with chances of thunderstorms, Seattle face a difficult task after a taxing mid-week Champions League game.
With a Thursday flight to Kansas City, Coach Sigi Schmid opted to take a couple extra players as he monitors his players’ physical recovery.
"We'll look how people are and how they recover,” Schmid said Wednesday night. “We'll travel with 20 because sometimes you don't know until the next day if someone comes up with kink or a bruise, so we don't have to fly someone in last minute.”
Schmid was happy with the victory against San Francisco — he just wishes that it didn’t take so long to secure. The Sounders' full-strength team expended 120 minutes of energy vs. the Panamanian club, with Mauro Rosales, Fredy Montero and Osvaldo Alonso all playing 120 minutes, among others.
Though the coach did say he was satisfied with the team’s overall fitness level, it should be noted that the Kansas City away match comes one week after a strenuous week that included matches in Panama and Houston.
There is one silver lining, though.
“The good thing is Kansas City had to play tonight as well and they ended up playing a man down in the second half,” Schmid said. “They didn't get overtime minutes, but it is what it was. That's why I wish we'd finished it 45 minutes earlier, but it is what it is and we'll deal with it."
Notebook
Schmid explained the decisions to drop Roger Levesque and Patrick Ianni from the starting lineup for the San Francisco game. They were replaced by Pat Noonan and Zach Scott, respectively.
"With Ianni and Parke, we were deciding between the two,” Schmid said. “We felt they had put in a lot of minutes and one of them needed to sit. We felt that Parke was a little more recovered than Patrick was so that was the reason. We wanted to get a fresh center back in there."
For Levesque, Schmid explained that his forward had looked tired during the week.
Andrew Winner covers the Seattle Sounders for MLSsoccer.com. Follow him on Twitter @AndrewWinnerMLS
