Set aside the tactics. Throw out the training sessions. No matter how they prepared for the match, nothing was going to change the fact that the Seattle Sounders were dealt a brutal hand ahead of their 2-0 loss at the Colorado Rapids last weekend.



Seattle was without 13 of their 25 first-team field players for their match Saturday, which was initially scheduled for April 10th but was postponed due to a blizzard that was forecast to hit the Denver area. A whopping 10 of those absences were due to international duty. Another player, midfielder Danny Leyva, was called up by the U.S. under-17s for the 4 Nations Tournament in the Netherlands, but wasn’t released by Seattle due to their full-blown selection crisis.



The Sounders weren’t the only team dealing with national team absences over the weekend. The Rapids had five players on international duty, including leading scorers Kei Kamara (Sierra Leone) and Diego Rubio (Chile). Sporting Kansas City...