Kenji Lindgren saves the USA (FM18)

[studbucket]

Sitting at the podium for the press conference, Kenji Lindgren starts out. “Today, we’re pleased to welcome 8 new signings to the team. We look forward to integrating them into the team and bringing some silverware to the city and fans of Seattle. I also wanted to say how grateful I am for the ownership of this club. We spent $11.7 million on players this transfer window. I promise to them and to the fans that there will be a big impact from this.”

Dannielle Munoz, The Washington Post “How seriously has your transfer budget been depleted by these deals?”
“There’s still enough to spend for us to get a couple more players in.”

Nathan Williams, Fox Sports “We’re just a week into the transfer window and, remarkably, you have 8 players signed. Do you have plans for further signings?”
“I think the club has to continue to look at improving the squad. Some of that may come in this window, but we already have some deals worked out for next window.”

Adrian Gutierrez, Fox Sports “You were able to buy Fabian Castillo and Lynden Gooch for relatively cheap. You must have expected to pay higher fees for players of their caliber?”
“Definitely. If they were my players, I would have expected at least double the fee. We now have these players with their best years in front of them, and I think they will make a huge impact for the club.”

Shalton Torres, Seattle Times “With the variety of players that you let go and have brought in, should we expect a change in the style of play?”
“Yes, I think so. Due to limitations with international spots and the lack of depth at some positions, we’ve decided to be pragmatic and move to a 3-man back line. We’ll be using our existing fullbacks, like Nouhou, as well as our new signings like Fabian out wide. This will allow us to move Nico inside and should allow for some more creative and positive play from us.”

Keith Roles, KONG-TV “Given that Teal Bunbury is rather susceptible to injury, isn’t this deal a bit of a risk? Won’t the player see more of the physio’s room than the field?”
“I have confidence that the worst is behind him and everything will work out well.”

Stratos Zifkas, ESPNFC.com “Given that Fabian Castillo can play both wings, where do you see him contributing. Where will you be playing him?”
“I primarily see Fabian playing on the left wing. This will allow us to bring Nico into the center and we’ll have Victor [Rodriguez] and Kevin [Funk] playing on the right.”

Dannielle Munoz, Washington Post “With only 6 international slots available to you, how do you plan on using them?”
“Yeah, right now we have all 6 filled up. Nico, Victor, Nouhou, Roman, Kyle Howkins, and Gustav Svensson. We also have Denso Ulysse on the roster, but I’m working to see if there’s somewhere else he could thrive better than here, given our formation and international slot limitations.

Long term, I’d like to see us use at least half of our international slots on very promising youngsters that we can groom into stars by the time they get their green cards. We’ve already started this process with some of the Colombian youngsters and the tall Mexican striker, Alan Rico, that we have coming in July. They can even feature in cup games ”

[studbucket]

In a piece of shocking news, Greg Vanney has left Toronto FC. Sitting 6^th in USA 1, the team was doing well and there was no sign of dissent in the locker room. The team has only won 1 game in their last 5, but it was still unexpected. In the meantime, Director of Youth Development Laurent Guyot has taken over as interim head coach.

Right now, Remi Garde (Montreal), Chris Leitch (San Jose), and Jim Curtin are the favorites to take over the Reds.

[studbucket]

The secondary window opened for the USA leagues, and while the Sounders were the big spenders, there was plenty of activity around the league as many players made moves via free transfers. Here are some of the teams that were most impacted by the moves made on the first day of the window.

Sporting Kansas City

In	Out
Atiba Harris (FC Dallas)	Erik Palmer-Brown (Man City)
John Stertzer (NYCFC)	Roger Espinoza (Atlanta)
Marc Pelosi (San Jose)	Kevin Ellis (Toronto)
	Saad Abdul-Salaam (Vancouver)
	Cameron Iwasa (Houston)

Portland Timbers

In	Out
	Darlington Nagbe (Sunderland)
	Lawrence Olum (D.C. United)
	Zarek Valentin (Vancouver)

New York City FC

In	Out
Victor Bernardez (San Jose)	Khiry Shelton (Montreal)
Ray Gaddis (Philadelphia)	Sean Okoli (Orlando)
Luis Gil (Queretaro)	John Stertzer (Sporting KC)
	Mikey Lopez (Chicago)
	R.J. Allen (Columbus)
	Ethan White (Chicago)
	Andre Rawls (Real Monarchs)

Montreal Impact

In	Out
Khiry Shelton (NYCFC)	Ignacio Piatti (Manchester United)
Daniel Steres (LA Galaxy)

LA Galaxy

In	Out
Lee Nguyen (New England)	Daniel Steres (Montreal)
	Jose Villareal (Atlanta)

Atlanta United

In	Out
Roger Espinoza (Sporting KC)	Romario Williams (New England)
Jordan Allen (Real Salt Lake)
Jose Villareal (LA Galaxy)

D.C. United

In	Out
Lawrence Olum (Portland)	Chris Korb (New England)
Ray Venegas (Medellin)	Jalen Robinson (Vancouver)
	Rob Vincent (New England)
	Jared Jeffrey (Columbus)

[studbucket]

Kenji Lindgren may have just found his goalkeeper of the future. News has come out that the Sounders have agreed to pay $375,000 to Nasarawa United for 17 year old Nigerian Michael Obodo. Obodo is a tall and determined goalkeeper who shows good decision making, but is very average athletically and very quiet. Coach Lindgren hopes that Stefan Frei will be able to spend some time with him molding him into the Sounders Future GK in just a few years.

Michael Obodo will join the Sounders on July 7, 2018.

[studbucket]

News has been leaking out of Seattle for the last month that Nicolas Lodeiro is looking for a larger stage to perform on. He has been very successful and is one of the best players in USA 1 and longs for top class European football. At first, we heard that Lodeiro had asked to join Inter, then a few more teams were floated out there. Now, we have tangible evidence of an offer from a European power.

Manchester City has made, and Seattle has accepted, a $12.5 million deal for Lodeiro. As part of the deal, Lodeiro will be loaned back to Seattle for 6 months, to help them finish out the USA 1 season and the FIFA World League.

[studbucket]

It’s not just the Sounders making moves, as NYCFC has brought Giuseppe Rossi back home. 15 years after moving to Italy and choosing to represent them instead of the USA in international soccer, the Jersey boy is back. NYCFC will be looking to pair him with David Villa this season, and he’ll likely take over for Villa in the future.

[studbucket]

It was another surprise from Coach Lindgren and the Seattle staff, as they signed Mix Diskerud on a free transfer. Diskerud has bounced around to several teams and fell out of favor in New York City and was out of contract after his loan to IFK Goteborg ended. With only a handful of suitors, Seattle made him the best offer and will look to rotate him through the midfield with Lodeiro, Roldan, and Gooch.

[studbucket]

It’s mid-January and the Sounders weren’t where Kenji expected or wanted them to be. Despite scoring 6 goals against Minnesota, their defense looked shaky, they had a -1 goal differential on the year, and they were sitting in 11^th place. It wasn’t acceptable, and Adrian Hanauer had made that very clear.

He was excited to give Kyle Howkins his first start at CB, as the towering Englishman should help a lot in defending the crosses Seattle is giving up with their 3-5-2. The Sounders would also be starting youngster Jonathan Gonzalez in place of the suspended Osvaldo Alonso and would have Mix Diskerud and Luke Caballero, former NYCFC men, on the bench.

New York City was sitting in 10^th place, and Patrick Vieira was feeling a similar pressure to Kenji. His team was underperforming and desperately needed this win. A victory for either club could see them jump up to as high as 7^th place, and they both desperately needed it, though the teams were headed in opposite directions. After 10 games, NYCFC was sitting 19^th, and Seattle was 6^th.

To help get them to the top of the league, New York City made a couple notable signings, including Giuseppe Rossi and Luis Gil. Thanks to those signings and their better recent form, New York City were the favorites in the game, and the fans in Yankee stadium were riled up because of the snow.

The sloppy weather led to sloppy soccer. Players were unsure of their footing and not much happened the first 20 minutes. The game slowly started to pick up, but was still 0-0 with only NYCFC having 1 real chance at goal. They were winning the possession battle 60-40, and needed to turn that into a goal.

In the 51^st minute, the crowd was given something to cheer for, as Giuseppe Rossi made his debut, subbing on for Rodney Wallace. Just a few minutes later they were silenced as Tony Alfaro kicked a deflected ball into the back of the net, but his celebrations were cut short as it turns out he was offside.

Seattle threatened again just 5 minutes later as Jordan Morris disposed a New York City CB and passed to a wide open Clint Dempsey, to kicked the ball just wide of the goal. With that, Coach Lindgren subbed on Mix Diskerud, who ran onto the field to a chorus of boos from the fans in blue.

Mix would prove to be good luck, however, as Jordan Morris scored a solid header after a nice team move and beautiful cross from Victor Rodriguez. Shortly thereafter, Kenji Lindgren made a strange sub, putting on Luke Caballero for Clint Dempsey, a strange sub to make when your team is lucky to be up a goal on the road.

After that, NYC piled it on, taking shot after shot. Tommy McNamara found himself wide open just 5 yards in front of the goal after David Villa drew away the defenders and passed to him. Unfortunately for NYC, he weakly hit it right to Stefan Frei. But New York City wasn’t done, they took shot after shot, many of them from distance, and seemed to enjoy picking on Mix Diskerud. The new Seattle signing was dispossessed at least 4 times in the last 20 minutes of the match, all of those leading to breakaways.

Fortunately for Seattle, all those shots went wide, and they came away with a 1-0 victory that wasn’t so deserved, but they would relish the 3 points.

The results of this game find Seattle moving up to 9^th, while NYCFC falls to 12^th. The boys in blue out possessed Seattle 58-42 and outshot them 22-9, but it was all wasted as Morris’ header got the win.

1

Unfortunate for Patrick Vieira, this was the last straw. A day after the game, he was let go and Kenny Arena was made the interim head coach. Chris Leitch (San Jose), Mike Petke (Real Salt Lake), Gregg Berhalter (Columbus), Chad Ashton (D.C. United), Diego Maradona (Al-Fujairah), and Adrian Heath (Minnesota) are all rumored to be candidates to take over for Vieira.