If a team has fatigue issues isn’t it better to play your regular fast players earlier to get the opponents to a state of fatigue earlier in the match? Keep Seba and Nyassi on the bench for if/when that happens, but I see no advantage in not starting Zak.

Ben, I’m of the opinion that you play the players most likely to get you a victory the longest. So often though I have been told that there is an advantage to having the fast players come off the bench late.

I believe the concept is that the player(s) may be only 10% faster early in the match, but late they would be say 25% faster as fatigue sets in and they are fresh.

I think the advantage of bringing on fast players is diminished if you haven’t run the team ragged in the first place. If you’re allowing KC to run at three-quarters speed for the first part of the game, the fatigue will not accumulate as quickly, extending the time they’ll be able to hang with the Sounders.

So I’d favor having at least one fast player in at the beginning and then adding more between the 60th and 70th minutes. What I’d really like to see, other than goals obviously, is consistent attacking pressure by the Sounders, forcing the KC defense to chase them for big parts of the game. Soaking up attacking pressure is a difficult, exhausting way to play and even very good teams will slip up here and there, giving up scoring opportunities. If we can force KC to play that way, I would feel very confident of a Sounders victory.

I’m wondering if that “admission” was a little bit of psyops by Vermes — KC looked less prone to fatigue than we did, especially in the second half. Still, we were able to gut it out, in a game that, had the bounces gone our way, should have been 5-2 or better.