Sounders Notebook: de la Vega Out For Season, Seattle Prepares for Tough Vancouver Side
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Seattle Sounders midfielder Pedro de la Vega kicks the ball during the 2025 Leagues Cup final on Aug. 31, 2025 at Lumen Field in Seattle, Wash. (Mike Fiechtner / Sounders FC Communications) [/caption]
For eight glorious minutes last Sunday at Lumen Field, Seattle Sounders fans finally got to watch their star winger Pedro de la Vega work the ball around the pitch with ease and finesse. He instinctively floated to the back post late in a 3-0 Leagues Cup win over Querétaro and, at one point, nearly tapped in a rolling pass from Jesús Ferreira before flicking his right leg up to magically keep the chance alive and show some of his much-needed quality.
But in the 85th minute, on a routine challenge, the 25-year-old Argentinian making his season debut after suffering a fractured kneecap last October went down. He didn't look to be in too much pain as the trainers checked on him, but he immediately went to the locker room with a left quadriceps injury. After the game, striker Danny Musovski said he saw the typically joyous de la Vega crying.
We now know why.
After training on Friday, head coach Brian Schmetzer revealed de la Vega's quadriceps "pull" is serious enough to end his 2026 campaign.
"Pedro has a very… significant left quad pull," Schmetzer said. "He is, you know, probably out for the remainder of the year."
Schmetzer confirmed surgery is on the table, but no final decisions have been made on that front as de la Vega comes to terms with his sixth distinct injury in three years with Seattle.
De la Vega, one of Seattle's three designated players alongside midfielder Albert Rusnák and striker Jordan Morris, has a near $1.4 million cap hit on the Sounders' books per Spotrac.com and a club option for the 2028-29 campaign. He earned the money last year, winning Leagues Cup MVP for a Seattle team that clinched the trophy for the first time.
De la Vega scored three goals in the 2025 tournament, including a FIFA Puskás Award-nominated strike off a first-touch volley in a 7-0 romp of Concacaf champion Cruz Azul. In 57 appearances in all competitions with the club, de la Vega has managed 11 goals and five assists, and has been a dynamic engine with a flair for dribbling when he's at his best and available.
"It really does hurt," Musovski said of losing de la Vega again after the Querétaro win. "Seeing him for 10 minutes play so well… I hope he'll be good and stay positive through this moment."
Losing de la Vega would be devastating enough on its own without the Sounders still missing key pieces like midfielder Cristian Roldan and center back Yeimar. But the good news is Seattle's wings have found some depth even after losing pieces like Georgi Minoungou and Ryan Kent this past offseason.
Tacoma Defiance signee Sebastian Gomez wowed in the Querétaro game with a goal and an assist, netting another start in the team's 2-1 loss to Chivas de Guadalajara on Wednesday. His ability and willingness to take defenders on 1-on-1 makes him a like-for-like swap with de la Vega, but the quality Seattle's DP brought will be a hard mark for Gomez to match.
For now, Schmetzer has settled into running leading scorer Paul Rothrock on the left wing with Ferreira on the right side — though the latter has proven to be better in central spots. Off the bench with Gomez could be Peter Kingston, who has played a more defensive role lately. Veteran wing Paul Arriola is still set to miss a few more weeks with a calf injury.
Speaking of injuries, Schmetzer confirmed he is working with his sports science team to try and find trends relating to why the Sounders have been so injury-prone in 2026.
"We're still going over all the data," Schmetzer said of analyzing the injury bug. "In Pedro's case we looked at that data… and the recovery was good, I mean we were recovering the knee but we were building a better a better athlete and then something else happened."
De la Vega was in full training for weeks leading up to what would have been a debut of about 15 minutes on the pitch — a standard, if not cautious, ramp-up. At the end of the day, Schmetzer acknowledged Seattle’s luck just hasn’t been the best this year.
"We're still looking (for injury trends), I mean it's going to be a process because this is an abnormal year as far as injuries concern," Schmetzer said. "We were trending in a fairly good direction, but this year it just seems to hit us pretty hard."
Schmetzer gave some more optimistic updates on some other injuries Seattle's been dealt, as he said Cristian Roldan and Morris could be back for either the Aug. 22 road match at FC Cincinnati or the Aug. 29 home game against the Chicago Fire. The coach noted that Hassani Dotson, another defending midfielder, is behind both of those timelines after a hamstring injury late last month. Arriola is likely on a similar timeline, due to return in mid-September.
Coming Up: Vancouver
Though the Sounders snapped a seven-game skid against Querétaro, their six-game MLS slide is alive and well as Seattle sits at 7-7-3 and in ninth place in the Western Conference halfway through the season.
On Sunday they'll take on a 10-3-4 Vancouver Whitecaps side leading the Western Conference, but coming off an 0-3 run at Leagues Cup and a 1-2-2 last five games in MLS play. Needless to say, a Whitecaps squad that just moved one of its stars, USMNT midfielder Sebastian Berhalter, will be looking to get right at Lumen Field this weekend.
Getting a result of any kind could put the Sounders on a path out of this current lull, with some injury reinforcements scheduled over the next month.
