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Sound Bites: The Sounders won’t be in the U.S. Open Cup?!?
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In this subscriber-only episode of Sound Bites, Jeremiah explains the ins and outs of Kim Kee-Hee’s signing as well as the explanation for why the Sounders are not being allowed to play in the U.S. Open Cup.
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Transcript
Introduction & Podcast Overview
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to Sound Bites, a mini podcast on the Sound Rote Heart podcast network. Today is Tuesday, January 28th, and I am Jeremiah Shan. On today's show, I'll be talking about Kim Kihe signing, becoming official, what it means for the roster and how, and the how's and why's of the sounders not playing in the US s Open Cup.
Kim Kihe's Signing Details
00:00:21
Speaker
Although we first reported it as a done deal about two weeks ago, the Sounders finally made the signing of Kim Ki-hee official on Tuesday. ah The broad strokes of the deal are this. He is 35 years old. He'll be on a one year contract guaranteed with an option for 2026. He was allowed to leave Olsen HD on a free transfer.
00:00:44
Speaker
My understanding is that he is on basically a minimum, a senior minimum contract. So probably something in the neighborhood of $90,000 to $100,000. You can compare that to, he's essentially replacing Nathan on the roster. Nathan was making about $500,000. And so it's not a like for like comparison in terms of their impact.
00:01:07
Speaker
financially, but I would imagine he'll play a similar role as Nathan played last year, mit maybe getting a few more minutes, especially since so Nathan only played in the, started two games, the first and last games of the season.
00:01:19
Speaker
ah But I digress. When you probably remember it Kim Ki-hee from his time with the Sounders, he was here in
Role & Impact of Kim Kihe
00:01:27
Speaker
2018-2019. He was a basically written and inked starter the entire time that he was here. ah That included starting in the 2019 MLS Cup, which of course the Sounders won at home.
00:01:39
Speaker
He is a physical but skilled center back. I can't pretend as if I've watched him a ton in the last five years, but he was a regular starter for Ulsan who is probably the top team in South Korea and one of the best teams in all of Asia. Ulsan won their league four times in the five years that he was yeah he was there, the one year they didn't win it, they finished second.
00:02:06
Speaker
They qualified for the Asian Champions League, basically every year he was there. He played in that tournament four times. he I think he made something like 23 appearances in Asian Champions League. He also played it in the Club World Cup, ah not which was quite a few years ago, but he also helped Ulsan qualify for this upcoming Club World Cup. I say all this because He was very good, even though you know he's he is 35 years old, but he's not too far removed from being a regular starter for one of the best teams in Asia. Again, just as recently as last year, he was a regular starter for them. ah He has been able to stay healthy for the most part. And I would imagine the Sounders are looking at him almost purely as a depth piece. I would guess that they probably see him as sort of a Jackson-Reagan stand-in.
00:02:56
Speaker
If the sounders are playing three in the back, he would probably be the center back who would play in the middle. If he's playing, if they're playing a four man back line, he would play B to the left. Uh, Josh attention seems to be lining up as the primary backup for Yemar. I don't know if it came down to it. If there's two center backs and one, and you know, one of those two was going out. I don't know how they compare Kim and Josh, but they are comparable.
00:03:26
Speaker
comparable on the on the depth chart right now there's obviously a lot of preseason to go anything can happen and we haven't seen him play with the sounders at all it sounds like he is most likely going to join the
International Player Strategy
00:03:40
Speaker
sounders when they get back to Seattle I think he's still going through quite a bit of paperwork to get over here. Although he had a green card when he was with the Sounders during his first stint, he is no longer a green card holder. That tends to happen when you've lived away for five years. So he he will count as an international. The Sounders did have two open international spots after Badilio Rodriguez was
00:04:03
Speaker
waved and so he takes up one of those spots they still have another open spot. My assumption is that that U20 or not my assumption all indications are from the sounders that they are holding that U22 spot for or that international spot for a U22 signing. We don't know when that signing may come it may not happen until the summer but it gives the sounders flexibility without having to go out and acquire one And they, we also don't know what position they're looking at to fill with that U22 spot. I think we can safely say it probably won't be a center back. They're looking pretty deep at center back right now. I've heard that they are maybe looking at a defensive midfielder. They could look at a fullback. They could look at a forward.
00:04:47
Speaker
We really don't know. We've gone over this a few times, and I think the sounders are really keeping an open mind about what they might end up doing with that spot. but So I guess my point is is that Kim, if anything, Kim signing maybe slightly closes the door on center back, but it doesn't really tell us much else what's going on there.
00:05:07
Speaker
ah They do have, I think, three open roster spots on their senior roster. ah That includes two on the supplemental roster, two spots on the supplemental roster. I suppose if anyone that is currently in camp has an inside track on getting in, I would assume it's probably Kalani Kosa-Rienzi. He has shown pretty well as a right back. He's versatile enough to play in the midfield.
00:05:35
Speaker
but there's no real reason that they need to sign him right now either. They can call him up ah on short-term loans if they want to three times. And so I don't necessarily think that that's gonna happen right away unless something else happens with the roster where all of a sudden they need him and they think he's gonna be playing a lot more.
00:05:56
Speaker
And
Sounders' Retention & Tournament Participation
00:05:57
Speaker
so that's probably it for veterans that the Sounders are going to be signing. ah There was just a ah study that came out today from elli mcke Elliot McKinney who writes over at American Soccer Analysis and he analyzed the percentage of teams roster that is coming back from last year. The Sounders have something like 92% of the minutes that they used last year coming back this year. That's a lot. It's the third most. Curiously, the two teams that are bringing back more were both not very good. The team that's bringing back the most percentage the highest percentage of minutes from last year is the Timbers, who famously got beaten 5-0 at home to the Vancouver Whitecaps in the first round of the playoffs. ah The other team that is bringing back a higher percentage of players is Toronto FC.
00:06:45
Speaker
I don't know what that really tells us other than these teams don't seem to be particularly well run. The team that has the most turnover. is someone you might expect. It's New England is only bringing back 37% of the minutes from last year. I just thought that was interesting as sort of an aside. ah The other big piece of news that came out on Tuesday and also part of why I wanted to do this recording is it finally got made official which cup competitions each MLS team is gonna be playing in. MLS put out a release that was frankly a little
00:07:19
Speaker
complicated to get through at first. But the big takeaway for the Sounders is that they will not be playing in the US Open Cup, but they will be playing in the League's Cup. So the Sounders will play in the Club World Cup, they will play in the CONCACAF Champions Cup, and they will play in the League's Cup. Again, they will not be playing in the US Open Cup. It actually ends a streak of 18 straight tournaments that the Sounders had played in in the US Open Cup. 18 straight U.S. Open Cups that they had participated in that goes back to 2005 when they were in the U.S. cell. So it included four seasons where they qualified for the Open Cup through the U.S. cell, which was not an automatic thing back in the day. And honestly, ah it wasn't an automatic thing when the centers first joined MLS either. So getting into the Open Cup 18 straight times did require them to qualify.
00:08:09
Speaker
quite a bit. So it is it is kind of an accomplishment. I suppose if you really want to stretch the meaning of that, this is the 19th straight year that the Sounders organization has qualified a team for the Open Cup because the Tacoma Defiance will get in. And it was not a given just because you are not playing in the in the league's cup does not mean that you are automatically that you're an lesson or just because the senior team is not in the open cup. It was not automatic that the next pro team would get into the open cup. There are actually three teams that have neither have or do not have participants in either the league's cup or they have no I'm sorry, they have no participation at all in
00:08:52
Speaker
the Open Cup, meaning they don't have a senior team, they don't have their secondary team in the Open Cup. That is Atlanta United, that is the Colorado Rapids, and it is San Diego, which is kind of curious. ah Apparently, what happened? Now, I guess i'm i'm I'm getting out of order here a little bit, but there are 18 MLS teams that were placed into the League's Cup. If you remember, I wrote a story a while back that explained that MLS is going to a new format for the League's Cup,
00:09:22
Speaker
It's gonna have 18 MLS teams, 18 League of Ameces teams, and they're gonna play this kind of Swiss style format where ah you play three teams from the other league, and then you have a standing, and then the the top, whatever, eight teams from each league move on to the round of 16, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, that's not, that that did not come out today that's still based on my reporting. I suppose it could still change, but that's what I understand. So anyway, you have 18 teams there.
00:09:52
Speaker
Well, that those 18 teams are the top 18 teams in the Supporter Shield standings with one exception. The Vancouver Whitecaps were already in the CONCACAF Champions Cup. They also were in the Canadian Championship. And so they were pulled out of the League's Cup.
00:10:09
Speaker
and replaced by San Diego. Why San Diego? Well, I think the real reason is that San Diego is a team that has obvious connections to Liga and Meccas. They are the close theyre ah just across the border from Mexico. They are a team that potentially this tournament is sort of built for, theoretically, in that there's a cross-cultural appeal to this tournament.
00:10:37
Speaker
officially there was not really a reason given other than they were selected so I don't know whatever MLS did what MLS does and they they they made it work the way they wanted it to work so that leaves ah them with the open cup all right So the way that the Open Cup was this year, like you last year you might remember only eight and MLS teams were put into the Open Cup. This year they expanded that to 16, so that's good news. But that's obviously well short of the 27 teams that would be eligible otherwise. So there are the 16 teams, the way they selected those 16 teams is if you are in neither the CONCACAF Champions Cup nor the Leagues Cup, they basically
00:11:20
Speaker
took the standings of the supporter shield and you were if you weren't in in that tournament you got into open cup and then they needed I guess guess that was like nine teams and then there were seven teams that they just took straight down from the top of if you aren't in CONCACAF champions cup you get to be in this thing so you end up with 16 it's kind of a convoluted system. I'm not gonna lie, I don't expect you to really be following. If you want to know exactly who's in, I would go to sounderatheart.com, read the story. There's a nice little graphic there that explains all that. The reasoning
00:11:58
Speaker
I don't know, it's neither here nor there. But the broad takeaway is individual teams did not have a lot of say in whether or not they were playing in these tournaments. Best I can tell they had virtually no say. I don't i don't know you know. Aside from broadly saying we would like to play in it, these are essentially the league came up with a set of rules for who got in.
00:12:19
Speaker
So you can be mad, I don't blame anyone for being mad that the Sounders are not in this tournament. I don't really think it's the Sounders fault that they are in this tournament. There seems to be this idea out there that teams sort of like self-selected whether or not they're gonna play in which tournaments, that's not how this worked. I can assure you that. But yeah, ah and and I think there is some truth to the accusation that and MLS is essentially undermining the US Open Cup by creating the league's cup and essentially creating the fixture congestion, which led them to sort of having to limit this. Once you have the fixture congestion,
00:13:00
Speaker
I think it makes sense that you don't want your teams playing in all these tournaments. That's fair enough. And honestly, I kind of like the idea of getting to watch Tacoma Defiance play in the league in the Open Cup.
Tacoma Defiance in the Open Cup
00:13:12
Speaker
This will be the first time since 2015 that a Sounders affiliate has been in that tournament, which is kind of cool. I would imagine that the Defiance roster will look pretty similar to how I would have expected a Sounders roster to look in those first couple of rounds.
00:13:27
Speaker
Beyond that, I mean, who knows? Obviously the big difference is that the sounders aren't going to be, aren't going to just loan a whole bunch of guys down to the Tacoma Defiance. And so at some point that's going to catch up to them. But I mean, I do think we'll get to see a little bit more time from some of the younger guys, which is, which is good. My understanding is that anyone from the supplemental roster can be loaned down for the open cup.
00:13:52
Speaker
That is not been officially announced, but that's sort of makes sense. And that's again, what I've been hearing. So, you know, senior roster players won't be eligible for the open cup, but some other players will. Guys like Stuart Hawkins, Leo Bernie, Trivian Sousa, guys like that, who I would imagine would probably get loaned down.
00:14:12
Speaker
And then the final bit of news coming up this week is the Sounders play the second of three
Preseason Matches & Season Preparation
00:14:20
Speaker
match days Preseason match days that they're gonna be playing in Spain. They're gonna be playing the Danish club all Borg That game is at 6 a.m. Seattle time We don't know if it's going to be streamed yet. I am doing my best to find out. I asked the sounders about it. They said they aren't quite sure. I i don't really know exactly what goes into that decision. But in any case, the sounders don't have a lot of control over it. Apparently, if we find out that that game is going to be streamed, I will do my best to ah publicize that.
00:14:54
Speaker
If I were you, I would probably be hanging out on the sounder at heart discord. That's where the first place I found out of it. We have a lot of people that are looking for this kind of information and it ends up popping up there oftentimes. And if we do find out about it, we will absolutely share that information.
00:15:09
Speaker
yeah Again, that's gonna be at 6 a.m. on Friday. The Sounders have one more match day ah to play in Spain, and then they're gonna come back here. They'll play Louisville City in a friendly, probably ah at Long Acres on the 12th, and then we actually have real games to start watching on February 19th. Kinda crazy how quickly this preseason is moving.
Conclusion & Listener Appreciation
00:15:29
Speaker
ah But with that, I'm gonna wrap this up. ah Thanks for hanging out with me today. I am Jeremiah O'Shan. This was Soundbites, and I will catch you next time.