Jordan Morris and the Seattle Sounders want to be the first MLS team to get off the mat and win the CONCACAF Champions League in its current format. (Getty)

Watching MLS teams get dominated in the opening leg of the CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinals this week made me wish the Seattle Sounders were involved in this year’s edition.

Big-spending (by MLS standards) Seattle has been a staple of the CCL in recent years but didn’t qualify for the 2019 event. Of the four league teams remaining, just one, defending MLS Cup champion Atlanta United, has a payroll in the top third of the domestic circuit. Roster spending isn’t the only reason both the New York Red Bulls and Houston Dynamo were shut out, at home, in multiple-goal losses to better-funded Liga MX sides, but it was a big factor.

Which brings us back to the Sounders. Without international games to worry about, Brian Schmetzer’s team rocked FC Cincinnati in the expansion club’s debut match. Back-to-back trips to the MLS Cup final in 2016 and 2017 limited Seattle’s offseason and left them weary when the CCL began early the following year. How much will the long break the Sounders had this winter help them down the line?

1. “It will help, definitely,” Sounders general manager Garth Lagerwey told Yahoo Sports in a phone interview. “We were spent (the last two abbreviated offseasons). We had nothing left to give. So for us, getting a rest this offseason was absolutely vital. From that standpoint, if you had to miss Champions League once, maybe this was the right year to do it.”

2. Last week, Lagerwey told the Seattle Times that the club is going all-in for a league title in 2019. “We need to win now,” he said. But that’s not to say that Sounders wouldn’t rather be playing CCL matches if given the choice. “We’ve been working for a long time to try to be the first MLS club to win that competition,” Lagerwey said. “If it doesn’t happen this year, hopefully we get a shot at it next year.”

3. Jordan Morris was the hero against FCC, scoring two goals in his first match since missing the entire 2018 season with a torn ACL. On Monday, he was named MLS Player of the Week. Things have changed a lot since Morris last suited up for the Sounders. Clint Dempsey retired. Peruvian international Raul Ruidiaz arrived and filled the forward spot that Morris occupied for much of 2017. That means that in addition to learning the tendencies of Ruidiaz and others, he’s doing it from a new position: a right winger in Schmetzer’s 4-2-3-1 set-up. Morris played on both flanks as a rookie in 2016.

4. “His skillset is a really good fit for that right wing spot,” Lagerwey said. “On the outside, he can really use his speed to help us attack from outside positions. He’s a very good crosser of the ball, people don’t realize that.” He’s only going to get better, and sharper, with more reps. “Physically he’s 100 percent,” Lagerwey said of Morris. “But when it comes to soccer, including last weekend, he’s played two matches in 17 months. There’s going to be some rust.”

5. Toronto FC is another team that lots of folks were down on after the Reds bombed out of CONCACAF in the round of 16. Then they went to Philly and beat the Union 3-1 in the regular season opener minus Jozy Altidore and two of their three designated players. As with the Sounders, not having to juggle CCL knockout matches could end up being a blessing in disguise for Toronto, which lost the continental championship on penalty kicks last April.

6. I was curious to find out how new TFC general manager Ali Curtis is settling into his role. Toronto has been in the news a lot since Ali replaced Tim Bezbatchenko in January. In addition to the Champions League debacle (they lost to tourney newcomer Independiente of Panama 5-1 on aggregate), the Reds sold key attackers Victor Vasquez and Sebastian Giovinco and re-signed Altidore.

7. “I honestly don’t feel settled in yet,” Curtis told me on Wednesday. “Everything’s been moving really fast since day one.” How fast? “I’ve never had this amount of work that’s been this complicated and this condensed ever, even when I worked at JP Morgan where we had a morning call at 6 a.m. and worked to 9 p.m., six days a week.”

View photos Laurent Ciman and Toronto FC rebounded from an ugly CONCACAF Champions League showing by beating the Union in their opener. (Associated Press) More

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