Update: I’m not sure how the pitch looked when the Sounders practiced on Saturday, but it looks mostly fine today. (See post above.)

I haven’t made it to the stadium yet, but I now know what’s going to greet me there: an American football grid on which the Sounders and Dynamo will play their most important game of the season.

I’ve spoken to several Sounders about this during the course of the season, and most of them have tended to say while it makes an unappealing setting for the beautiful game, it doesn’t really impact that play.

Not so for Freddie Ljungberg, who says he in his Freddie Speaks Up blog today that when he played on the football lines and numbers at New England, he had a hard time recognizing where he was on the pitch. Here’s his blog post.