SEATTLE — Once the dust settles and all the signings and re-signings are announced, the Seattle Sounders will have something like 28 players under contract. For a team that routinely enters preseason with closer to 20, this is a major departure.
While that’s great from a stability perspective, what often gives the early parts of preseason their energy is all the competition for spots. With so much of the roster settled, this year’s preseason seemed likely to lack that aspect.
Potentially contributing to that problem was that many of those veterans have been missing from these early days of training.