Saturday is one of the games a lot of people circled when the schedule was released on February; the build up has been exactly what one would expect from a derby game. Lots of sledging, trash being talked and of course all this generates a lot of media hype.
It’s another big night out under the lights at Qwest field.
Former Sounder player and manager (@alanhinton11) sent out a tweet yesterday that said “Bigger the crowd the better for me. Sounders players playing in front of 35000 SFC fans and 15000 timbers would be a real soccer experience.”
I tend to agree with Alan Hinton, a huge, passionate crowd does add to the experience. This is the first year and I think the three Northwest teams are going about this the right way as this is a largely new experience for the US. A little caution is reasonable, but if everything goes well we could see this grow into something unique in the US sports calendar every year.
Timbers manager John Spencer has been part of the nastiest rivalries in the game, namely as a Rangers player against Celtic. It’s a game I’d love to experience one day. Today he proved once again he knows how to needle an opponent by saying the atmosphere at Qwest is second only to that in Portland.
He followed that with “First and foremost, Seattle is our fiercest rival. We know that, but you still can’t hide away from the fact that they’ve done a tremendous job up there from top to bottom. You’ve got to give credit where credit is due.”
While not every team has a game that rivals the Old firm in Glasgow, every team has games that mean a little more, even today with mercenary players and foreign ownership. For Coventry it was playing Birmingham City. Aldershot it was Reading and for Woking Town it was Farnborough.
The atmosphere should be outstanding and like many I’ve been looking forward to this for months. It’s not going to be easy, derby game never are, and recent form means almost nothing come Saturday night.
Many with long memories may get that the rivalry with Vancouver is perhaps a little more important to many, in the USL days they were always little more charged. But it’s always a little special to beat up the neighbours. I had a little look through the history books and the fixtures during the last year of they played each other in the USL resulted in 12 yellow cards, 1 red and Seattle knocking out Portland in the playoffs. This is going to be fun.
This is going to be fun and once the whistle blows the hype stops and it’s down to 22 players and the ref to make it special. I hope we get to see a good game, with no trouble and a Seattle win.