Victor Mansaray takes next step in Sounders’ system

Thursday morning wasn’t Victor Mansaray’s first training session with the Sounders senior team.

The 17-year-old forward has been with the club’s academy since the 2012-13 season and was getting the occasional practice run with the big-league squad since this summer. During Thursday’s session, Mansaray already blended in like a regular despite donning a bright scrimmage jersey beneath his blond Mohawk.

“Since the first day I stepped in here, these guys are like family to me,” Mansaray said. “They take care of me. Anything I ask for, if they have it, they’ll give it to me.”

But Thursday marked another kind of milestone: It was Mansaray’s first training session since signing a homegrown player contract with the Sounders on Wednesday.

Mansaray is the first player to ink such a deal since the club announced the creation of the Sounders 2 USL-Pro team last month.

“It’s an alternative to them going to college,” Sounders coach Sigi Schmid said, naming academy product and UW senior Darwin Jones as an example of someone who took the other route.

“Because we have S2, this a route that helps suit (Mansaray’s) development.”

Mansaray is the fourth homegrown signing in Sounders history, after DeAndre Yedlin, Sean Okoli and Aaron Kovar. With the new infrastructure in place, he’s unlikely to be the last. Schmid compared his new signing to another Sierra Leone-born forward – and one-time English Premier League striker – Kei Kamara, who was the first pick in the 2006 MLS SuperDraft by Schmid’s Columbus Crew.

“At the same age, Kei maybe had more raw physical ability, but I think, soccer-wise, Victor is ahead of where Kei was at that age,” Schmid said.

Mansaray will start his on Jan. 1, when he will be officially added to the roster. Although he’ll be looking up at a depth chart headed by Obafemi Martins and Clint Dempsey, Mansaray is undaunted.

“My goal is to play on the first-team here,” Mansaray said.

Rose, Pineda return

Seattle midfielders Andy Rose and Gonzalo Pineda joined the practice session late on Thursday, trotting onto the Starfire fields together while the rest of the team was already engaged in drills.

But while Schmid said there was a good chance that Pineda could make his return from a muscle injury for the second leg of the Western Conference semifinal against Dallas, Rose’s prognosis was less rosy.

“Monday is probably not going to happen for him, because he pushed last time and that’s where he got himself in trouble,” Schmid said.

Parsemain gets call

Though he’s still recovering from the ACL injury that has kept him out of MLS action this season, Sounders forward Kevin Parsemain will join his native Martinique for the 2014 Caribbean Cup following Monday’s playoff match at CenturyLink.