Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports
On Sunday, Aug. 25, the Seattle Sounders will be hosting the Portland Timbers in yet another edition of the Cascadian rivalry which promises to be extremely exciting.
The last time these two sides met in Seattle, they shared the spoils as Portland found a late equalizer to end the scoring at one apiece.
This time around, the Sounders have one of the best attacking midfielders/strikers from the United States at their disposal – Clint Dempsey – who was recently signed from Tottenham Hotspur of the Premier League. He brings with him a vast amount of experience from Europe and an uncanny ability to dribble, control and score the ball at will. Seattle has good players, but they just signed a great one in Deuce (Dempsey).
Besides Deuce, they have also signed Nigerian international striker Obafemi Martins from Levante of La Liga (Spain). He is quick, strong and knows how to score from almost any angle with both of his feet as well as his noggin. If he teams up with Dempsey up top, this team will be extremely dangerous.
However, as we all know, having some of the world’s best talent up top doesn’t necessarily mean that they are a shoe-in to win this match. Portland is a team that plays a quick-passing game that is good at both defending as well as striking on the counter-attack. They can definitely cause the Sounders some problems in the final third.
If Dempsey and Martins start up with Eddie Johnson behind them in the midfield on the left wing, Seattle should win this game 3-1 or 3-2. The reason for those score lines being that the Sounders will start out strong and take their foot off the pedal after building a solid lead. Once they let Portland in, it will be hard to slow them down.
