The Portland Timbers were forced into two early subs when beating the Seattle Sounders2-1 Sunday evening, first withdrawing playmaker and MLS is Back Tournament MVP Sebastian Blanco and then center back Larrys Mabiala.
Blanco injured his right knee in an awkward collision with Seattle's Joao Paulo in the second minute of action at CenturyLink Field (watch video above). Afterward, Blanco appeared distraught sitting against the dasher boards on the sideline, while Marvia Loria came on in the fifth minute to take his place.
"Right now, it's on the right leg around the knee," head coach Giovanni Savarese said after the road victory. "So we will see tomorrow after we evaluate every possibility, we will understand a lot more exactly what happened. It's unfortunate that he had to come out of the game so early and hopefully he's going to be fine. We'll see after the evaluation exactly what will happen."
The hits kept coming for Portland, when Savarese withdrew Mabiala for Julio Cascante at halftime. The TV broadcast said the veteran injured his right thigh, having logged 45 minutes.
In earlier games, Osvaldo Alonso and Sergio Santos also left prior to halftime, and there were also a couple other unexpected absences from team sheets around MLS on the final day of Week 10.
Alonso left his match for Minnesota United against Real Salt Lake in the 17th minute, with what appeared to be a left hamstring injury. The 34-year-old has missed two previous matches this season, though his most recent appeared to be due to squad rotation.
Santos exited in the 29th minute of the Philadelphia Union's match against the New York Red Bulls with a muscle injury, as confirmed by head coach Jim Curtin after the match. The Union were still able to persevere in a 3-0 win. Santos has missed only one game so far for the Union this season.
On the other bench in that contest, both Sean Davis (knee injury) and Aaron Long (hamstring injury) were exclusions from the Red Bulls' team sheet after neither were listed in the team's injury report. The local broadcast noted that Davis is expected to be out 2-3 weeks.
And Lucas Zelarayan was not on the Columbus Crew SC roster during their 3-0 win over FC Cincinnati in the latest edition of the Hell is Real Derby, though it is not yet clear if that is injury related. Zelarayan missed two games recently for the Crew but had started their last two matches.
