As Sporting Kansas City hosts the Seattle Sounders at Sporting Park on Saturday evening, I caught up with SI.com's Liviu Bird to preview the match. Live coverage of Saturday's match is available on 38 The Spot (KMCI), SKCTV across the midwest, Sports Radio 810 WHB and La Grande 1340 AM.
Jonathon Feyerherm: What are your thoughts on Saturday's match?
Liviu Bird: It's an interesting matchup, as it always is when these two teams play each other. Certainly they are some of the top teams in the league right now. Kansas City has only lost twice this year, Seattle has lost three times but they've been on a good run recently. In this league, anything can happen, as we saw a couple weeks ago when these two teams met. It was a scoreless draw and quite honestly it was pretty boring. But at the same time you can remember games that they've played that were exciting. The first game of the 2014 season, even though it only ended 1-0, was still a pretty good game.
JF: What are your thoughts on Seattle this season?
LB: It's pretty much been as expected. You have the forward pairing of Dempsey and Martins. Everyone expects them to do well and they have. Their chemistry has really come along nicely in the last couple years. The midfield has been as effective as it always has been, trying out some different combinations. It's been interesting to see Christian Roldan adapting to his role as a professional. I've had the chance to see him play quite a lot since I've been up in Seattle and saw him at the University of Washington. He's the kind of guy who I've always thought would be a very good professional player. So far he has played well. I don't think he's really been given the opportunity to take a starting position and run with it yet, and once he does get that opportunity, I think he will get even better. Stefan Frei, last year we saw signs of life from him that he was really in this career resurgence moment and that's really continued into this year and he's played well. Sigi Schmidt says it a lot, it's harder to be a goalkeeper on a good team than it is on a bad team because on a good team you might only have one chance to make a save and you have to make or else your team could lose 1-0. Whereas on a bad team there's not as much pressure, you know you're going to get multiple opportunities to show your stuff throughout the game. So, I think he's played well. I don't think any of this different than what we expected to see from Seattle this year so far.
JF: With several players missing due to injuries and international duty for both sides, how do you expect that to affect the match?
LB: As we've seen, bench depth in MLS is a very fragile thing. We've seen that teams who get the best out of their 2nd and 3rd string players will end up, generally, doing better throughout the year. But at the same time, I think it will affect the quality of the game for sure. Now it is just a matter of which of those 2nd choice guys can step up and take that opportunity and affect the game positively for their team.
JF: What are your thoughts on the strong play of Sporting KC's Krisztian Nemeth and Benny Feilhaber?
LB: I like Nemeth. He's a guy who always looked like he would do well in MLS after he adjusted. He's not a big guy but he's creative. Physically he's not the most impressive, but at the same time his other qualities sometimes make up for that in a way some MLS teams can't handle. Considering the teams he's played for, Liverpool, Olympiakos, some of the top teams in Europe. Now, playing for the Hungarian National Team, and I think he was always a guy who would succeed once he adjusted to the way the league plays. Benny Feilhaber is a guy who, for the last few years, I have thought was very under-rated. He's one of the best central midfielders in the league. It helps the team, that he hasn't been getting called in to the National Team because he's able to focus just on playing for Kansas City. I think that he's been probably the most important player the last couple years. Look at guys like Dom Dwyer, who can be streaky. The back has been kind of unsettling, in terms of the goalkeeping situation at least. Besler is sometimes gone for National Team duty as well. I think Feilhaber has really been that guy that really drives the team, both offensively and defensively. He's been probably one of the best midfielders in the league over the few years consistently.
JF: What are some things you're looking forward to seeing from Saturday's match?
LB: It's gonna be interesting to see which of the 2nd choice players come into the game and make an impact. I think Christian Roldan will have a big role coming into Saturday's game. Because of the absences, he's going to start somewhere and it's just a matter of where and watching him go up against Benny Feilhaber, if they both play in the middle, I think that will be something to watch for. And of course both defenses will be short-handed and both attacks will be short-handed, so I think this one could be won in the middle. So I think that match-up will be an interesting one. I think even if Andy Rose plays in the middle and Roldan plays out wide, whoever ends up playing in the middle against Felihaber will be an interesting match-up.
JF: How do you expect Seattle to aproach Saturday's match at Sporting Park?
LB: Well I don't necessarily think that they will go into the game expecting to get one point, I'm not sure if Seattle does that with any match, really. Kansas City's record at home this year has been better recently but they've also stumbled a couple times, with the opening day draw against the Red Bulls and tying the Timbers and RSL at home. I think it's a game that Seattle will look at and think they can probably win. That being said, they're coming into Sporting Park short-handed and we saw how that worked out for FC Dallas last week. So it might not be quite as simple as that. I don't expect Seattle to sit back and I would expect both teams to really go for it. Hopefully it'll be an entertaining game.
JF: Finally, your thoughts on the Western Conference this season?
LB: I think Kansas City joining the Western Conference definitely made it stronger. In my opinion it's definitely the stronger of the two conferences right now. If you look at points, the Rapids have 13 points and are in last place in the West, they would only be two points out of a playoff spot in the East right now. For a while there, while the Timbers were at the the bottom, they still would've qualified for the playoffs in the East. The West is definitely the stronger conference. If you look down the list of teams, the most entertaining ones are probably in the Western Conference as well, teams like Vancouver, FC Dallas and LA. To have a team like RSL in next to last place really shows how strong the conference is. I think people were surprised by the way Vancouver came out, I wasn't really surprised because I get to see them more often, living in the Northwest. I think they've been one of the better teams that just haven't found success in the last couple years, but they're starting to find that this year. I think the MLS Cup winner will come from the Western Conference and it is the better conference right now.
