It’s easy to lose Andreas Ivanschitz within this Sounders attack.
He’s not the Future of the Franchise, a la Jordan Morris. He didn’t make an immediate splash, like Nicolas Lodeiro, and his signing wasn’t a watershed moment in the way Clint Dempsey’s was.
Ivanschitz is unassuming and unerringly polite both off the field and on it, so long as he’s not talking to a referee. If the Sounders had superlatives, he’d been the friend most likely to drop you off at the airport at 5 a.m.
But with Dempsey’s return still uncertain as he continues to undergo evaluations for an irregular heartbeat, and with Seattle’s season hanging by a thread ahead of a pivotal match at San Jose on Saturday, the quiet man of the attacking line could make all the difference.