The injury news is not good for Patrick Ianni. The Seattle Sounders’ presumed starting center back has a broken right foot and will miss four to six weeks, an MRI revealed on Tuesday.

That puts Ianni’s availability for Seattle's March 2 season opener against the Montreal Impact in doubt, and means the 27-year-old will miss most of the remaining portion of preseason training at least.

“Like I said [on Monday], we go on,” Sounders head coach Sigi Schmid told reporters on Tuesday. “We have some internal options to look at.

“If something looks right, certainly we won’t ignore it. But we have to look at the long haul. We can’t just focus on what’s going to happen at the beginning of the season or what’s going to happen in the first series of games. We can’t do something that maybe solves an immediate problem if it creates a longer-term problem.”

Before injuring himself during a jump test, Ianni was in line to take over Jeff Parke’s starting spot alongside Jhon Kennedy Hurtado.

It would have been a rather significant development for Ianni, who has logged more 1,500 minutes only once in his seven MLS seasons. Ianni began 2012 as one of the Sounders’ first-choice center backs, but various injuries ultimately limited him to just 15 starts.

Injuries have cut Ianni’s season short each of the past two years, as he missed significant time in 2011 as well. The last time he was able to stay healthy for most of the year was in 2010, when he set career highs in starts (24) and minutes played (2,096).