SEATTLE – The path to his Seattle Sounders debut was a bit bumpy, but in the end, Christian Tiffert couldn’t have drawn it up much better.
The 30-year-old Designated Player played 26 minutes on Sunday evening as the Sounders won 4-0 against the visiting LA Galaxy in front of nearly 61,000 fans. Tiffert showcased some quick passing, solid off-the-ball movement and even came close to scoring his first goal in rave green.
It also took some patience in order to happen. Before Tiffert could play, he needed to receive his P-1 visa, which required him to leave and re-enter the country.
“We traveled to Vancouver and stayed in a hotel,” Tiffert recalled about the preparations for receiving the visa. “We waited and waited for an e-mail and wait and wait and wait. It happens on Friday. It was perfect.”
While Tiffert was waiting, he had hoped to watch the Sounders play Caledonia in CONCACAF Champions League group stage play on Thursday. That did not go quite as well.
“The live stream was a disaster,” Tiffert said. “We could not watch the game for three seconds in a row. It was terrible, but the result was good.”
Since arriving from Germany early last week, Tiffert said the biggest adjustment has been jet lag, which he says was causing him to fall asleep around 5 pm and wake up at 3 am. He said he has now recovered, which seemed to show in his performance against the Galaxy.
“I thought he was good,” Sounders head coach Sigi Schmid said. “He was almost in on that one opportunity off the one-two toe poke. You also saw him make some tackles in the back, so it shows his two-way capabilities.
“He's going to help us. He's a guy who plays simple, who combines, is hard when he needs to be, and he's the kind of guy who when you watch him is just easy-running and all of a sudden, boom he makes a move and that was like when he got in. It was like nice and simple and all of a sudden he was in behind them on a quick sprint and they didn't know what to do with him."
Jeremiah Oshan covers the Seattle Sounders for MLSsoccer.com and SB Nation.
