Platatudes: Joao Plata with an outside chance to play against Seattle

Joao Plata might not be so badly injured, it turns out. He’s traveling to Seattle, and he’ll be traveling to Columbus, and that all brings some joy to our day.

There is no I in Plata

There’s a distinct chance Joao be back for Saturday against Seattle Sounders. He’s traveling with the team.

Whether he gets a shot against Seattle or if he’s kept out for Columbus, he’s an option. One might rightly expect him to be on the bench rather than starting, but something tells me there could be some mind-game-playing going on here.

Regardless, there are several other strikers that could feature. Or, rather, players that could be strikers, but aren’t normally. So, without Plata, we could be looking at the following pairings. For some sort of helpful something, I’ve added a few words on what we might expect from each pairing.

Sandoval/Garcia: Movement, which is awesome, excels here.

Findley/Garcia: Speed! And plenty of it. Game-changing speed maybe.

Garcia/Gil: Maybe this would be … creative?

Garcia/Mansally: Speed and genuine left-sided attacking width. Hmm.

Mostly, I am pretty sure Olmes Garcia plays. And there is an “I” in Garcia, so that’s something.

Time heals all Platas

Especially if his hamstring injury wasn’t as severe as we all were worried it was, right?

Everything happens for a Plata

I’m not much for fatalism, but if you wanted to ascribe some sort of deeper reason for Plata’s injury, maybe it’s that it opens up opportunities to give others minutes.

Now, I know that they’d probably have picked up minutes here and there anyway — it’s probably easiest to fit in forwards in those sorts of rotations, given short bursts of energy can be highly impactful — but that’s somewhat beside the point, if there is one to be gleaned.

Anyway, it sure made our week interesting, thinking about this.