The Seattle Sounders will effectively close out the Marbella, Spain portion of their preseason on Thursday when they face Denmark’s Odense BK in a split-squad match. The first of those matches is scheduled to kick off at 4 AM PT with the second scheduled for 6:30 AM.
The first game, at least, is supposed to be available to stream here:
Odense BK is currently ninth in the 12-team Superliga, which splits into separate championship and relegation rounds after 22 games. Odense would need to make up a 10-point gap to get into the championship round. They are scheduled to resume their Superliga season on Feb. 16 and are coming off a 0-0 tie with FC Dallas last Friday.
Odense's leading scorer is Haitian-American Louicius Don Deedson, who has scored seven goals so far this season.
Players have been building toward 90-minute fitness for this match, with most having played 60 in the first preseason match and 70 in the previous one. With that in mind, this is scheduled to be played as two separate 90-minute matches.
Here's some of what we should be watching for:
- Albert Rusnák came out of the previous match early after taking a hard tackle, seemingly as a precaution. If he starts, that's clearly good news. Rusnák has been one of the obvious bright spots of preseason, scoring in both games and generally looking like he's adapting well to playing farther up the field. Rusnák had five goals and four assists last season, almost all of which came while playing as a 10 later in the season.
- Pedro de la Vega appears to have resumed training, but we've yet to see him suit up. There's not necessarily a huge rush to make that happen, but this would seemingly be a good chance to get the Young Designated Player trending toward full fitness ahead of the regular-season opener on Feb. 24. Of course, the outstanding play of Léo Chú in the first two games – a goal and two assists – potentially makes it a little easier to bring de la Vega along slowly.
- Even without most of their starting defenders throughout preseason, the Sounders have only given up two goals in more than 250 minutes of action. Of the presumed starting defenders, the only one who is even remotely likely to feature against OB is Alex Roldan, who was held out of the previous game for unspecified reasons. That gives plenty of opportunity for the likes of Jon Bell, Xavier Arreaga, Nathan and Cody Baker to continue to make cases for themselves. All four have looked very good so far.
