TUKWILA, Wash. – Seattle Sounders general manager Garth Lagerwey has made clear that simply qualifying for the CONCACAF Champions League isn’t good enough. He wants to win the whole thing.
After Monday’s draw, the Sounders know the opponents they will face through in the group stage to achieve that goal, and they will have their work cut out for them.
The Sounders were matched in Group F with Olimpia of Honduras and Cascadia Cup rivals Vancouver Whitecaps. Although the matchup with the Whitecaps does decrease travel demands, Sounders head coach Sigi Schmid still feels his team drew the toughest task of any MLS team.
“I think we drew a tough group,” Schmid told reporters following Seattle’s practice on Tuesday. “Much harder than the other MLS teams' groups are.”
One factor that Schmid cited as evidence of the challenge presented by Group F is the added frequency with which his team will have to play their Cascadia Cup rivals. With two Champions League matches against the Whitecaps, the Sounders will now have nine combined matches with Vancouver and the Portland Timbers over the course of the season, not including any games in which they might meet in the postseason.
Seven was a lot of games against rivals already, even before the added CCL games.
“That’s now five games we have to play against [Vancouver],” Schmid said. “There’s already four against Portland. I think we see those guys enough, and that’s not even counting a playoff game. It would have been nice to avoid them, and I’m sure they feel the same way. But at the end of the day, it is the draw that we have to abide by, and we’ll go out there and get after it.”
No matter how tough their group may be, the Sounders have maintained that winning the Champions League is critically important to making their name on an international level.
“The Champions League is a 13-month commitment,” Lagerwey said at Sounders Media Day at CenturyLink Field back in March. “Hopefully we’ll end it by raising the trophy in April of 2016. That’s something we really believe in as an organization and is a priority of mine.”
As a side note, Schmid did not offer a scouting report on Olimpia, but he did give one on Tegucigalpa's Toncontín International Airport, once rated the world's second most dangerous airport by The History Channel.
“I’m not a big fan of flying into Tegucigalpa,” Schmid said. “That’s not my favorite airport. … It’s one of the most dangerous airports to fly into. You can look that up. It’s, like, right on a cliff, so if you don’t take off in time, you’re over the cliff. When you bank in there, you almost feel like you can touch the dirt.”
