Sounders: Silver Lining to Obafemi Martins’ Departure?
By Ben Renner
The Sounders lost their most consistent offensive player last year in Obafemi Martins when he bolted for the Chinese Super League just over a week before the season starts. Is there a silver lining?
Seattle Times columnist Matt Calkins called Obafemi Martins’ sudden departure for the Chinese Super League a “gut punch” in a recent online article and he was right on the money. In only 21 games Martins played with fellow striker/superstar Clint Dempsey, the pair combined for 25 goals and 16 assists. Overall, Martins scored 40 goals in 72 games in the MLS and was the runner-up for the MVP award in 2014. Calkins and other analysts rightly call him the most consistent player for the Sounders in recent seasons. I could go on with these numbers and cite the Sounders’ record with and without him in the lineup, (spoiler alert: they were respectable with Martins and awful without him last season, just in case you forgot) but the Sounders are losing their best player from a season ago just before the season starts. I wouldn’t go as far as Calkins, who compared losing Martins to the Seahawks losing Russell Wilson to the CFL before their final preseason game, but it’s close.
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Where do we go from here? Instead of all the obvious negative aspects of the Chinese Super League poaching the Sounders’ best player, let’s focus on the positives. Martins’ departure will reportedly cost Shanghai Shenua $2 million and free up a Designated Player spot on the Sounders’ roster. It seems unlikely that the club will use that extra money and roster space to land another impact player before the summer, but it gives Sounders GM Garth Lagerway flexibility to add a complementary midfielder to balance a roster stacked with strikers.
Speaking of strikers, the player likely to benefit the most from Martins shipping off to Shanghai is Lagerway’s prized offseason score, hometown wunderkind Jordan Morris. With the 31-year-old Martins out of the way, Morris figures to take a larger role in the goal-scoring operations of the team. It’s unrealistic to project Morris to replace the production that Martins created during his tenure with Seattle, but it could be the opportunity Morris needs to develop into an even better striker and overall player, a scary prospect for the rest of the MLS.
There are many more questions than answers surrounding this Sounders squad minus Martins. All of sudden they look vulnerable heading into a season in which they have to call their upstart I-5 rivals the Portland Timbers defending champions (sorry to bring it up).
Next: Jordan Morris Stays Home
It could be a rocky start to the season for the Sounders, but they could end up a more balanced team with a new designated player and Morris developing into the MVP candidate we know he can be. And hey, we still got Dempsey.