Looks like we have some catching up to do. The Seattle Sounders have sold about 14,000 tickets for the March 7 CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinal against Santos Laguna. With a month left before the game, that's a perfectly respectable total, but it's also about 25,000 fewer than Toronto FC has sold for their quarterfinal against the LA Galaxy the same day.

Not to make this into some kind of appendage measuring contest, but there's just no way we can sit idly by and have TFC sell more than twice as many tickets as we have. Sounders fans have taken a good deal of pride in showing up to games rain or shine and packing CenturyLink Field even on relatively short notice, as has been the situation for the U.S. Open Cup finals in each of the past two seasons.

Granted, the Sounders have not really pulled out the big marketing muscle yet, and they very well may do that, but anyone reading this site should take some serious pride in using this game as a chance to evangelize. That doesn't mean you should feel compelled to take your whole office, but bringing along at least one friend that wouldn't otherwise go is a pretty good start.

Let's remember, this is easily one of the five most important games the Sounders have ever played at C-Link. There's no good reason why we shouldn't turn out in numbers that shows we understand that fact.

Tickets can be had for $15 -- or less. I would highly recommend contacting your ticket agent, visiting the box office or, if you must, going through online channels.

As our own malcontentjake and countless others have demonstrated repeatedly, the numerical shorthand for soccer formations which we're all accustomed to (e.g. 4-4-2) is almost completely useless. Whether you have a 'band of 4' defenders or a 'band of 5' is much less important than what those defenders are doing at any given time. And the inherent assumption of symmetry doesn't map well to a world in which one fullback might be more attacking than another, one winger might cut to the middle more than the other, or one forward might play in front of — rather than next to — another.

Fundamentally, a formation is just a shorthand description of where the players tend to be on the field. So what better way to determine the formation than to simply keep track of where the players are? Thanks to the detailed statistics that Opta is collecting for MLS matches, we can do just that. Though the data doesn't include every player's location at every moment, it's granular enough to include the location of every pass, tackle, shot, interception, and other on-ball event. While there is a lot to playing a position that doesn't include any of these events, I think it's fair to say that if a player spends any significant time in an area of the field, he will tend to engage in those activities there as well.

So if we take every tracked event that a player was involved in and map it onto the field, we can see where that player played. This is exactly how the heat maps on the league site are generated. And if we plot the mean location of those events and call that location the player's 'formational position' we can see where the entire team is playing, on average. Here is an example from the final Seattle Sounders regular season game last season — versus Chivas USA:

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From Joe Roth to Adrian Hanauer to Sigi Schmid to players like Mike Fucito, Seattle Sounders FC has been quite clear about its goals for this year. Another US Open Cup title will not be enough. It is a consistent organizational chorus that started at the End of Year Business Meeting and is hinted at in most conversations about the upcoming season. Sigi and the coaching staff are planning preseason with the expressed goal of beating Santos Laguna. That game is the first step on a quest that could see the Sounders competing for up to five major trophies (including next year's CCL) in the 2012 calendar year (the LA Galaxy and Toronto FC are also in this group).

Interestingly enough. Seattle will not be the favorite for any trophy except for the one that they will defend for a fourth straight year. The US Open Cup #3attle defense must consider the Rave Green as favorites, as the team is built with depth in mind. It is a hallmark of a Hanauer-crafted team to make a long run in the national cup competition, and most fans would consider anything less than a sixth straight semifinal appearance to be a disappointment.

In those other trophies, though, Seattle will not be betting odds favorites. If Sounder at Heart staff was running futures bets, Seattle would not be any higher than third most likely to win, and in some cases lower. There isn't a huge overlap between the various trophies' schedules, so congestion won't be quite as big an issue as in years past.

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Continuing their preseason tradition of a Community Shield match to raise funds for charity partners, the Seattle Sounders today announced that their opponent in the Feb. 29 7 PM match will be Jaguares de Chiapas of the Mexican Primera. In a new twist, the match will be free and seating on a first-come, first-serve basis, but the club will be accepting donations at the door. This is a similar model as used in Reserve League matches at Starfire, but this match will be at CenturyLink Field against a team that finished fifth in the 2011 Apertura and lost to Santos Laguna (4-3 aggregate) in the quarterfinals.

Jaguares de Chiapas joins Atlante as a preseason Mexican opponent as the Sounders prepare to face Santos Laguna in the CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinals. At eight days before the opening of the 2012 competitive year, Sigi Schmid will likely field mainly starters based on recent comments on a conference call:

Out of that group of 15-16 guys, we want to make sure they get into a rhythm of going full-out every week, making sure they push themselves to a game. Obviously the game against Columbus is going to be an important game for them. Then a little over a week later they’re going to get full run out again against Atlante. Then a week later we’re hoping to solidify another game and then a week later we play against Santos. We’re trying to get them into that rhythm, so they really get used to building up into a weekly rhythm earlier than they normally would.

While the basis of the Community Shield model is for two trophy winners to face off, the Sounders seem to be building this match on a game against an available team that could best prepare them for competitive matches.

Full release follows

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