Seattle Sounders star Ljungberg well ahead of schedule

Seattle Sounders midfielder Freddie Ljungberg has trained for the first time at Quest Field.

Spending the majority of the training session doing fitness and limited to non-contact work by team doctors, Ljungberg was very positive: “It feels great. There’s nothing I can’t do, so it’s all good.

“I’m so much ahead of schedule that it looks too good to be true. They’re a bit scared that if I do too much I’ll have a setback. There is no pain in anything that I do, which is great, so that’s why they want me to take it step-by-step.”

Head coach Sigi Schmid told the club's official site that the club doesn’t plan to pressure the former Arsenal star onto the field too soon.

“We’re going to look at it day-to-day. We’re not pushing too much of a timetable on it. We want to see how he gets through today, how he gets through tomorrow,” Schmid said. “He’s trained a little bit of soccer before he came with a lower division team in Sweden. This is a little bit faster, the tempo is a little bit quicker, so we’ll see how he goes each day and our expectation is that in 2-3 weeks he’ll be full-out in training.”

Seattle Sounders face New York Red Bull at home in their first ever MLS match Thursday 19th March.