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There's a fun little game that many Seattle Sounders fans have been playing lately called "Where in the world is Obafemi Martins?" If you're the type of person who is really good at this stuff, you try to ascertain information from his regularly updated Instagram account where he appears to be someplace with much nicer weather than Seattle.
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You could also follow along with him on various foreign websites that have linked him to various teams in Turkey and Spain and probably some other places I've missed.
While the Sounders have clearly noticed all of this, they don't seem very worried that their Designated Player is going to skip out on his second MLS season.
"Our expectation is that Oba is going to be there when we start preseason," Sounders head coach Sigi Schmid said during a conference call with reporters. "I think he has a bad travel agent, so he gets a lot of connections when he's trying to get back to the States. There is a lot of connecting stops along the way.
"But we expect him to be here at the start of the season. There is nothing that he's said to us that indicates anything different."
While that is well short of a guarantee, it at least indicates that the Sounders are not actively shopping the Nigerian international. During his conference call, Schmid repeatedly referred to how he felt Martins fit into the overall picture. At one point, Schmid also suggested that Martins would be able to play a more natural position farther up the pitch now that Eddie Johnson is no longer on the team.
