(Photo by Robert Giroux/Getty Images)
Seattle—the Emerald City based in the Pacific Northwest, famed for coffee, grunge music, Pike Place Market, and the Space Needle—could soon be adding to its list of attractions with the name of Seattle Sounders FC.
Granted, we are only 90 minutes into the new Major League Soccer season, but the statement of intent laid down by Sigi Schmid’s expansion team in their 3-0 destruction of New York Red Bulls, last season’s beaten MLS Cup finalists, could not have been any more emphatic.
Scoring goals is the hardest part of the game, and players who have been cobbled together for a first tilt at America’s top level habitually struggle in this department.
San Jose Earthquakes took until their sixth game last year to notch their third goal. Toronto waited until their ninth game in 2007 to achieve the feat.
Seattle required a mere 75 minutes.
The outstanding performer on opening night was Colombian international Fredy Montero. The 21-year-old forward claimed last year’s Golden Boot award in his home country while playing for Deportivo Cali. He started his loan spell in MLS in a similar vein, with two impressive strikes.
Montero is exactly the sort of player that this league should be trying to attract; a young, raw, developing talent, reared in the soccer hotbed of South America, who is desperate to become established at the professional level.
The 32,523 fans that created a euphonic sea of green inside Qwest Field this evening were certainly excited by his repertoire of skills.
The hosts’ first meaningful attack on 11 minutes resulted in Montero opening the scoring.
1 Comments
Loading more comments...
This comment and all replies have been deleted This comment has been deleted Undo delete