Paul Arriola suffers torn ACL, likely out for rest of 2025

RENTON — After enjoying a relatively clean injury report during the first few weeks of the season, things will look very different as the Seattle Sounders get ready to face St. Louis City on Saturday.

Paul Arriola (ACL), Pedro de la Vega (quadriceps), Jordan Morris (hamstring) and Yeimar Gomez Andrade (personal) were declared out for this game. Combined with the absences of Reed Baker-Whiting (hamstring) and Kim Kee-Hee (regaining fitness), the Sounders will be missing four probable starters and two others who would have likely been part of the gameday squad. Just for good measure, head coach Brian Schmetzer has also missed the last couple of days of training with an illness and is unlikely to travel with the team.

Of the absences, Arriola’s hits the hardest. He suffered a left ACL tear in Tuesday’s Concacaf Champions Cup match and will likely be out for the season. Although the Sounders can place Arriola on the season-ending injury list — which will allow them to recover about 75% of his salary-cap hit, which Sounder at Heart has estimated to be about $700,000 — replacing him will be challenging. He had established himself as a starter, had already scored two goals and is also a popular player among teammates.

“It’s a tough one,” Sounders captain Stefan Frei said. “He integrated really well for us. He’s an amazing guy in the locker room, and that’s not going to be lost.

“I think he’s still going to bring a lot of that to the team off the pitch. He’s going to push really hard to come back from this and we’re here to support him as well.”

The recovery timelines for de la Vega and Morris aren’t nearly as catastrophic, but weren’t exactly good news either. De la Vega, who was able to do some light training on Friday, is expected to miss another 3-5 weeks after suffering the injury in Saturday’s win over LAFC. Morris is likely out 4-6 weeks after straining his hamstring in Tuesday’s loss.

Yeimar has returned to Colombia in order to deal with a personal matter and is expected to rejoin the Sounders next week.

The injury crunch is similar to what the Sounders faced at the start of last year when they won just two of their first 11 games. Since that nearly disastrous start, though, players like Paul Rothrock and Georgi Minoungou have emerged as productive midfielders and the Sounders now have another proven goal-scorer in Jesús Ferreira, who can fill in at striker.

“I still think we’re deeper this year,” Frei said. “We’ve not really dug ourselves a hole in the league. It’s a matter of guys stepping in and performing and keeping the train rolling.

“The guys have to step up and look at it as opportunities to play. They ought to be hungry themselves to try to play to the best of their ability and get results. We’ve always said it’s the whole team, it’s not just 11 guys that are going to achieve something.”