The Seattle midfielder was pulled over around 8 a.m. Sunday. The police report references a "strong odor of intoxicants" coming from his car.
A Washington State Patrol test showed Sounders midfielder Marco Pappa had a blood-alcohol content more than twice the legal limit after he was clocked at 84 mph on Interstate 5 near downtown Seattle on Sunday, according to an arrest report obtained Friday.
Pappa, referred to as Marco Papa-Ponce throughout the arrest report, was pulled over around 8 a.m. on Sunday after a trooper noticed his car speeding and passing cars on both the left and on the right on I-5. The police report references a “strong odor of intoxicants” coming out of Pappa’s vehicle and two open containers of alcohol in the right, rear passenger seat.
Pappa underwent a field sobriety test before being placed in custody at 8:28 a.m. and taken to a nearby State Patrol office to perform a blood-alcohol-content screening. He provided two breath samples, .174 and .166. The state limit is .08. He was released to a licensed driver after the testing was completed.
Pappa played the final 26 minutes of Seattle’s 1-0 loss to Colorado on Saturday night at CenturyLink Field, having just returned to the team following Guatemala’s early exit from the 2015 Gold Cup. The 27-year-old midfielder has no previous moving violations in Washington.
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Pappa is ineligible to play until the completion of an MLS investigation and screening by the league’s substance-abuse doctors.
“He’s a teammate, and we need to support him,” Seattle coach Sigi Schmid said Tuesday. “I think all of us, individually, have either known somebody or somebody that we were related to that went through something like this, or another difficult situation like this.
“Right now he needs our support to come through this at the other end as a stronger person.”