Now with a stunning 1-1 draw in the books against the Vancouver Whitecaps the Seattle Sounders announced five preseason scrimmages in their "Florida" phase of training. Florida in quotes because the key note match will be against Atlante FC behind closed doors in Cancun, Mexico on February 22nd at 4PM Pacific. Atlante is currently tied for second with a 3-1-1 record and lead the Primera with 9 goals scored.

That match ends that phase of training which also features matches against Orlando City SC (2011 USL Pro regular season and playoff champions) on Feb 13th, the Columbus Crew (47 points, 4th in East in 2011) on Feb 15th, the United States U-17 Residency team (featuring Sounder Academy player Paul Christensen) on Feb 16th and on Feb 19th they face University of Gulf Coast (39th in final NCAA rankings).

There are also indications at the Ticketmaster website that the Community Shield will be on Leap Year Day. An opponent has yet to be announced. If Seattle were to maintain the tradition of the Shield from other countries the opponent would be the LA Galaxy, but the team is also focused on preparing to face Santos Laguna in the CONCACAF Champions League Champions Round.

Sigi Schmid's Seattle Sounders FC took the pitch in anger for the first time. While it may only be preseason anger, the number of cards (10 yellow, 1 red) and the puncture wound on Mike Fucito indicate that emotions were high and form was off. While the game ended with both the Vancouver Whitecaps and Sounders netting just one goal apiece, the point of these matches is not to win, but to prepare to win meaningful games. There were a lucky hundred or so Sounders fans in attendance and readerJason Riptide shared his thoughts on what he saw live.

Schmid in postgame comments released by the club noted that Seattle has yet to do formal finishing work. Their work so far is on the tweaks to possession along the backline, playing out from the keeper and discovering who will work together best for those two games against Santos Laguna. The opening lineup looks very likely to be one played on March 7.

Michael Gspurning, Adam Johansson, Jeff Parke, Jhon Kennedy Hurtado, Leo Gonzalez, Mauro Rosales, Osvaldo Alonso, Brad Evans, Alvaro Fernandez, Fredy Montero, Mike Fucito (Roger Levesque 29')

It is notable that when Fucito left due to the injury he was not replaced by Sammy Ochoa. Instead, ForMidFender played extra minutes, showing again that utility men have a distinct place on the squad. As for Fucito's injury Schmid described the event in the release:

[H]e got tackled pretty badly so we got to hope that it's not a more serious injury because he's got stud marks on his knee and up his thigh. So it was a little bit of a high challenge. He's also got a puncture wound there so you've got to make sure there's no infection and stuff like that because that could lead to a staph infection. We've got to be careful. It just kept tightening up on him because the blood was flowing in there so we needed to get him off the field.

The second group is a bit different from what would be a second team as the following players were held out for precautionary reasons - Christian Sivebaek, Patrick Ianni and Steve Zakuani. This gave Mike Seamon a role out wide and paired Andrew Duran and Zach Scott at Centerback. From the highlights you can see how well this second team did with ball movement.

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Darwin Jones was among the Seattle Sounders' recent cuts from preseason training camp, but that doesn't mean he'll be going very far. The 19-year-old has joined the University of Washington's 2012 recruiting class, giving the Huskies four Sounders Academy products in this class alone. Jones will be accompanied by Michael Gallagher, Ian Lange and Dom Dismuke. Along with Drew White, who will be entering his sophomore season at UW, the Huskies will have five Sounders Academy players on the 2012 team.

The addition of Jones is particularly noteworthy. When the list of commitments was originally released last week, Jones' name was not included. Jones spent last season at Highline Community College, where he led the team with 15 goals and 10 assists.

"In my opinion, Darwin is likely the best attacking player entering college soccer next year," UW coach Jamie Clark said in a school release. "He has electric pace and great feet, which makes him a very tough matchup defender. He had a great season with Highline CC last year and before that was a standout for the Seattle Sounders Academy. He has big shoes to fill with the departure of Brent Richards, but I believe he's ready to make a big impact. "

On Super Bowl Sunday Fox did soccer fans the generous courtesy of airing the Chelsea v Manchester United game live on broadcast television. The game certainly had highlights worthy of a general sports fan's attention and it was shown in basically twice as many nations as the Super Bowl will be this afternoon.

Unfortunately many die-hard soccer fans chose today as a time to show petty small-man feelings and litter social networks with how their sport is better, more exciting, etc. The bold statements about popularity in regards to soccer usually tend to ignore that the NFL is not just an Amero-centric sport, but league that is fiscally sound and makes billions in profits every single year. It grows in popularity outside of the USA every year, and there is an increasing likelihood that there will be a team in London within your lifetime.

Instead the reflexive reaction of soccer fans (in general) was to look down on other sports, to assault the non-soccer as if it is a zero sum game. It is not. This is a weakness in a psyche of the American soccer fan that needs to end. To quote Adrian Hanauer at Date with Sounder at Heart;

In fairness to us the game has been swept under the carpet for so many years, it's a niche sport and we've come out of the basement and I understand it, but that's sort of the next step - where we're not defensive anymore about the game.

Today's Super Bowl is a celebration of the most popular sport in America. Taking the piss out of it does not help soccer grow. It continues that locked in the basement attitude. Get beyond that.

Hanauer mentioned at that same event a type of behavior he hopes to see grow. It is something that we here call soccer evangelism.

I think that because soccer has made it in this city (again I don't want to come off the wrong way) we in the soccer world have the ability to be a little exclusionary and self-righteousness and preachy, to say "if you don't like it you're stupid."

We aren't better. We have different interests and we need to find ways to share those interests in order to increase interest in the sport and league we love. If MLS Cup had even 5% of the interest of the Super Bowl that would be good for the sport. Telling the hundred million plus of your neighbors how stupid their interests are isn't going to help.