It's been quite a while now since Didier Drogba calmly planted the ball in the bottom left corner of the net to defeat Bayern Munich in the Champions League final, but tonight we have Chelsea football again! Exciting, isn't it? Gone are Didier Drogba, Jose Bosingwa, and Salomon Kalou. Marko Marin, Kevin De Bruyne, and Eden Hazard have all officially joined the club. Most of the squad that participated in Euro 2012 will not be participating tonight, but we have many younger faces ready to step up and show what they can do. Here's the lineups:
Sounders FC will be saying farewell to Roger Levesque this evening, so it should be a fun night for all involved. If you're unfamiliar with our American opponents, Sounder at Heart (our excellent Sounders blog) has a gamethread open as well. As this is a friendly, Roberto Di Matteo will not have a limit on the substitutions he can use. We'll probably see a pretty good mixture of young and old tonight, and we will likely see the Chelsea debuts of quite a few young players. The 25 players Chelsea have taken to Seattle are as follows:
Goalkeepers: Petr Cech, Ross Turnbull, Hilario, Jamal Blackman
Defenders: Gary Cahill, Nathaniel Chalobah, Paulo Ferreira, Sam Hutchinson, Branislav Ivanovic, Todd Kane, David Luiz
Midfielders: Kevin De Bruyne, Michael Essien, Frank Lampard, Josh McEachran, John Obi Mikel, Ramires, George SavilleAttackers: Patrick Bamford, Yossi Benayoun, Eden Hazard, Gael Kakuta, Romelu Lukaku, Marko Marin, Lucas Piazon