Sounders FC looks to take advantage of Houston

Sounders FC coach Sigi Schmid couldn't have known he'd be missing his team's most important regular-season match since the inaugural game when he found out his son's wedding was set for today.

The Houston Dynamo, two-time Major League Soccer champion, comes to Qwest Field with the best record in MLS and a hold on first place in the Western Conference. Sounders FC (6-3-7) is in third place, six points behind the Dynamo. A win moves Seattle to three points back. That's the situation when Seattle and Houston kick off at 1 p.m. today.

Houston leads the league in wins with nine, but enters the game missing two players due to red-card suspensions and three more, including former USL Sounder Brian Ching, to national-team duties in the CONCACAF Gold Cup. The Dynamo will also be without a pair of key players because of injury, forward Cam Weaver of Kent and Seattle University, and defender Wade Barrett.

Sounders FC is without two regulars, defender Tyrone Marshall (with Jamaica in the Gold Cup) and midfielder Brad Evans (U.S., Gold Cup). Another, midfielder Osvaldo Alonso, is questionable to play because of a groin injury but practiced on Friday.

The Dynamo's advantage will be in its veteran nucleus. The team has retained much of its core of players that won back-to-back MLS Cups in 2006 and 2007.

"They're just a veteran team," said Sounders FC coach Sigi Schmid, who well be counting on updates from team staff while he is with family Saturday. Assistant coach Brian Schmetzer will handle the coaching duties. "They've got a lot of core players that have been through a lot of battles together. I know they're missing some guys but they're still a core and there's a nucleus and there's a team belief there, and that makes them a very good team."

Schmid knows something about winning championships by building a consistent winner around a core group. He accomplished that at Columbus, turning the Crew into a champion in three seasons. Now he's trying to create a nucleus of veterans and younger players that will be maintained over a few years in Seattle.

"Houston is a team that has an extreme high level of confidence in themselves," Schmid said. "When you win championships together, when you've been through as many things as they've been through ... there's a resolve that builds within your team that probably no other team that we've played this year has."

Which makes this game an important one. Seattle has a chance to make a statement that it can defeat the elite — it twice lost to Chivas USA when that team was in first place in the West earlier this season — and stay right in the thick of the playoff hunt.

Two Sounders FC players who were on those Dynamo championship teams could have an impact on the match, forward Nate Jaqua and defender Patrick Ianni.

"It's the group of guys you played with, and whenever you play your former team you want to beat them," Jaqua said. "Playing here at home, it's a game we can definitely win and it's a very important game for us."

José Miguel Romero: 206-464-2409 or jromero@seattletimes.com