The Seattle Sounders are now into the home stretch of preseason, having played 4.5 games during their time in Spain with just one more match to play before they face Antigua GFC in Concacaf Champions Cup on Feb. 19.
The games in Spain have given us quite a bit of data to work with when it comes to assessing the strength of the roster and where players are likely to slot in. Now feels like as good of a time as any to share an updated depth chart.
Before I do that, a few notes:
- From everything the coaches have said and looking at how the team has lined up, it is pretty obvious that the Sounders are going to at least try to shift into some sort of three-centerback formation.
- It is not yet clear exactly what that formation will be. We will likely see a fair amount of a 3-4-2-1, 3-2-4-1, 3-5-2, 3-4-3, etc. The way I’m drawing this up sort of assumes a 3-4-2-1/3-4-3 formation.
- The Sounders are probably not going to completely stop using 4-2-3-1, either.
- Given all the games the Sounders will be playing, there’s probably not going to be a bright line of differentiation between at least some of the starters and some of the reserves. Brian Schmetzer mixed up the groups a lot while they were in Spain and I am expecting to see more of that lineup juggling for at least the first couple months of the season.
- For the purposes of this graphic, we only wanted to list players once. In reality, there are a bunch of players who will play multiple positions. If you feel like pouring over a more in-depth accounting of each position, I’d urge you to check out the “Organizational Depth Chart” that we regularly update.
Without further ado, here’s how I see the depth chart right now:
I’m not going to go over every position, but I did want to dig in a bit more on a few more of the tougher calls the Sounder at Heart editorial team had to make when putting this together.
