The Seattle Sounders will close the home portion of their regular-season schedule against Real Salt Lake on Saturday, during which they’ll unveil their Leagues Cup banner. To help provide some insight into the opponent, we asked Matt Montgomery of Wasatch Soccer Sentinel to answer some questions.
Notable injuries
There aren’t any notable injuries but Braian Ojeda, Zavier Gozo and Diego Luna will all miss out because of international duty.
Team form
It’s been mixed at best — while two wins from the last two games against teams competing for the bottom playoff spots feels good, that’s preceded by two consecutive 4-1 losses to LAFC, then three losses from four before that point. To say it’s been mixed might be an understatement.
Key players
Without Luna and Gozo, the list gets pretty small: Rafael Cabral, Victor Olatunji, and Rwan Cruz. It’s weird to highlight a goalkeeper here with Cabral, but he’s been really good and certainly a game-changer. Olatunji is leading the line these days, and he’s not been incredible, but he’s shown some nice signs of being an effective striker — poised to break out, maybe? Cruz is a creative, roguish forward, and while his instincts don’t seem to be leading to much in the way of productivity — he just has one assist, no goals — you never know with those sorts of players. Oh, and Deandre Yedlin, because he plays for us now.
One thing we should know about your team
You can never count out Real Salt Lake under Pablo Mastroeni when it comes time to inch into a playoff spot. He has a knack for motivating teams in those circumstances. (It hasn't led to trophies, but we've made the playoffs in worse circumstances before.) Also, if Nouhou scores another own goal, it'll make him the joint-fourth-best goal scorer for Real Salt Lake, and we'll have more own goals than all but three of our players have goals. We really struggle to score goals. It's hard.
Projected lineup
(4-4-2) Cabral; Yedlin, Glad, Vera, Katranis; Goncalves, Caliskan, Ojeda, Luna; Cruz, Olatunji
