Making The Case For Benny Feilhaber And The Seattle Sounders
At 5 pm ET Major League Soccer’s newest addition Benny Feilhaber will make his way through the league’s allocation order and find a new team to play for after leaving Denmark’s second division team Aarhaus. The interest is high for Feilhaber, who is 26 and entering the prime of his career. Where will Benny land? Lets look at the order.
1. Chivas USA
2. Philadelphia Union
3. NE Revolution
4. Houston Dynamo
5. Toronto FC
6. Chicago Fire
7. Sporting KC
8. Seattle Sounders
9. Columbus Crew
10. Red Bull NY
11. Real Salt Lake
12. LA Galaxy
13. FC Dallas
14. Vancouver Whitecaps
15. Portland Timbers
16. DC United
There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that Feilhaber drops very low in this allocation process; the order is full of teams that could use a creative play-making midfielder that churns out assists, starting with pole-sitters Chivas USA. The move to the Goats makes perfect sense: the team needs a playmaker, Feilhaber grew up in Irvine and played college soccer at UCLA. But there’s one other team that needs Feilhaber, and that would be the Seattle Sounders.
In their inaugural season, the Sounders stepped up to the pitch big time with a flowing attacking style that featured midfielders Freddie Ljungberg and Sebastian Le Toux feeding forwards Nate Jaqua, Steve Zakuani and Fredy Montero for goals. The biggest mis-step of the franchise was not protecting Le Toux in the supplemental draft which saw the Frenchman head to the Philadelphia Union, where he has blossomed as a constant threat to score. Although his stats from the 2009 season are nothing to write home about (one goal, three assists), losing the playmaking abilities of Le Toux led the Sounders to worse season last year (finishing 6th overall rather than 4th in 2009).
Now, Seattle has a chance to make amends and add a dynamic midfield player to their team. Montero and Zakuani would immediately benefit from Feilhaber’s distribution and vision and would re-ignite the Sounder attack. Make it happen…the clock is ticking.
I have to completely disagree with everything you say about the Sounders in this one. First, Le Toux was not a big part of the Sounders in the MLS. Sigi rarely played him and it made sense not to protect someone who barely saw the field.
Second, placing the blame on Sounders having a worse season last year than the year prior on losing Le Toux is so far off base. I would blame the key injuries to Jaqua, Hurtado and Alonso. With each player missing so many games, it was difficult for the Sounders to find continuity.
Third, the Sounders are one of the few teams who really don’t need Feilhaber. Rosales, Friberg, and Fernandez are all capable of playing the creative midfielder role. It is a matter of Sigi’s tactics and choosing to go with Alonso and Evans - two more defensive minded center mids - over one of the three midfielders I’ve just mentioned.
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