Sounders want 3-4 seeding; not yet talking 1-2

This season, the MLS rewards for playoff seeding come in twos. The 1-2 seeds get an opening bye. The 3-4 seeds get home-field for the play-in round. And the 5-6 finishers at least get their shot at the postseason.

With the Seattle Sounders currently back up to fourth in the Western Conference -- and with a visit to No. 5 SKC awaiting Sunday -- coach Sigi Schmid brought up the advantages of finishing the regular season in third or fourth, but admitted the team hadn’t talked much about 1-2.

“It’s good for your players to stay in rhythmm,” he said when asked about the advantages of a competitive stretch run. “And like I said, the benefit behind the scenes might be that guys are going into the playoffs with less games on their back and maybe not as fatigued. Hopefully that will be something we can draw upon. But at the end of the day, we want to get to a certain point if we can in the league and get ourselves in a situation where if we have to play a play-in game we’re at home. So that means we have to finish at least third or fourth.”

He was asked about maybe aiming higher and getting a first-round bye.

“We really haven’t talked about that,” he said. “All we’ve really talked about is getting our rhythm, getting our confidence.”

More from Schmid:

On SKC: Obviously we want to continue to get points in league. It’s an away game for us. Not quite sure where they’re going to be at in terms of their mindset. Obviously they took a couple of yellow cards in the last game: (Matt) Besler, so he’s out; (Benny) Feilhaber tried really hard to get a yellow and got his yellow at the end, so he’s out. I’m sure he wasn’t going to play that game anyway, so it depends what group they’re going to put out, what group they’re going to try and save for the Open Cup, how important the league points are to them. But the group that they’re going to put on the field is going to be very, very competitive.

On SKC without Feilhaber: Benny at midfield does a lot of good things for them. He’s the one that’s led them with his passing. He’s got a lot of assists for them, but he’s the guy who sets the tempo and opens up the game for them. Obviously if he’s not out there, (Paulo) Nagamura is somebody who can do that portion of the job as well. Maybe (Graham) Zusi plays inside more and does more of that job.

On today’s training: The day after a game is never a great day to train. Late game, people can’t fall asleep afterwards. It takes a little while to get going. But I was happy with what we did and just the effort. Just being closer to being healthy and now its just a matter of getting fit makes it a good thing for us.

On Neagle and Barrett’s contributions last night: It’s a different situation because you’ve got Valdez between them. He had a goal and two asssits, so it allows Neagle to play a more comfortable role of coming the flank. Obviously he finished his goals really, really well. It’s just easier. You have more veteran guys. You had a Friberg on the field as well with a Barrett. Even though Leo hadn’t played in a long time, you had an experienced back four with a lot of games under their belts in this league. That just makes it easier to play.

On the last match at SKC with controversial penalty call: We thought that was a little bit of a harsh call, even looking back on it now. But it is what it is. Those things tend to even out over the course of a season. It’s more about us and less about KC. It’s about us continuing to play well, it’s about us continuing to feel confident and growing our confidence together and it’s about us knowing that we want to get to the playoffs, we want to get those points, and we know in the playoffs that we’re probably goiong to have to play on the road and we want to do well on the road. It’s all about us right now, it’s not about KC.

On the chance his hot team can get better still: That’s going to take time. You look at how many mintues Valdez has played with the other guys, how many minutes has Ivanschitz played with the other guys, so from that standpoint that’s something that’s still going to take time. Is that going to be a finished product? Don’t know as to when that is going to happen. It’s possible based upon the players we have now, maybe we play a slightly different way or different style, but right now to change that in the middle of the season doesn’t make a lot of sense.

On the full roster coming together: I always felt we had a good team. It was just a matter of all the injuries. … When you have six out of 11 starters out of your lineup it makes it tough to play. I always felt once we got those people back on the park and got them back into training, it raises the level of training. Better training means you play better in games.

Schmid also said Osvaldo Alonso trained today and is physically OK after a rough weekend match at Vancouver. And he clarified that Thomas and Dylan Remick have been out recently due to the increased depth and coach’s decision.

This story was originally published September 24, 2015 at 2:46 PM with the headline "Sounders want 3-4 seeding; not yet talking 1-2."