Short-handed or not, Sounders could use a player like Mercer Island’s Jordan Morris

Last Wednesday, while the Sounders were in Philadelphia with a squad so short on attackers they started just a single forward, one of the brighter goal-scoring prospects in American soccer was at their training facility, getting some run in with their minor-league team.

Jordan Morris is a Mercer Island native and the son of the Sounders’ medical director. He’s a former club academy kid, and is currently breaking his way into the regular rotation with the U.S. national team.

What Morris is not is a Sounder, having rebuffed multiple Homegrown Player contract offers this offseason to return to Stanford for his junior year — a decision the 20-year-old is sticking with, as he reiterated last week.

And make no mistake: Seattle certainly could use him, with Obafemi Martins recovering from a groin injury and Clint Dempsey leaving on national-team duty. Even when both return to the fold, Morris likely would be valuable.

“He’s playing with the full national team. I have to think that he can come in and contribute right away,” Sounders general manager Garth Lagerwey said, likening Morris’ potential impact to the way rookie midfielder Cristian Roldan has broken into the lineup ahead of schedule.

Lagerwey also said it was clear from the first time he met Dr. Michael Morris this past January that Jordan was going back to school. To hear the player tell it, though, the choice was more complicated than that — and that U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann’s unorthodox decision to call up a college player helped justify it.

Morris became the first college player to earn a national team call-up since the late 1990s when he was brought in last August, making his debut against Ireland a few months later. Morris scored his first international goal against Mexico in April, helped set up back-to-back game-winning Bobby Wood goals as the U.S. stunned the Netherlands and Germany in succession this month.

“It was a really tough decision for me, because I love school and I know it’d be a great experience to come (to the Sounders),” Morris said. “I definitely did reconsider it and kind of went back and forth for a couple of weeks.

“I want to play in a World Cup someday if that’s ever possible. I think that’s the goal for a lot of players. If something was hurting that (chance), I might have to reconsider some things. But it’s been great, and Jurgen has been amazing with me.”

The Germany game was particularly surreal, as the U.S. came from behind to topple the World Cup champs. Germany wasn’t at full strength, yet still trotted out international stars like Bayern Munich’s Mario Gotze, Real Madrid’s Sami Khedira and Arsenal’s Mesut Ozil. Morris came on at the half, helping set up Wood’s goal with a decoy run to free up a passing lane for Brad Evans.

Less than 24 hours earlier, Morris had been taking one of his Stanford finals from afar at the team hotel. Now, here he was, donning the red, white and blue and tracking back to mark an Ozil run.

“I have a picture of me reaching out to defend him, and it didn’t really hit me until afterward that I was playing against some of the best players in the world,” Morris said. “It’s something I never really thought would happen, but it was such a cool experience.”

Morris maintains his decision not to turn pro had less to do with financial considerations than with the fact that he’s an “emotional and nostalgic person” who decided to go with his gut.

“It was never really about the money at all,” Morris said. “It was more that I am just really, truly loving it at Stanford and I realized I’d never get that experience back. The pro game will be there in another six months.”

Six months will take him through another season with his Cardinal teammates, through one more shot at a deep NCAA tournament run. It’ll take him closer to a degree — he recently declared as a Science, Technology and Society major.

Six months also bring Morris, should he continue to make such productive use of his national team call-ups, further onto the radar of European clubs that could entice him with a jump overseas.

Before the Netherlands and Germany games, Morris was one of the U.S. standouts with the U-23 team at the Toulon Tournament in France, an event known for drawing the eyes of scouts around the world and whose participants have included Zinedine Zidane, David Beckham, Thierry Henry and Cristiano Ronaldo.

“Nothing concrete or anything,” Morris said when asked of any European interest. “A little bit, here and there, talking to (U-23 U.S. coach) Andi (Herzog), but nothing that’s been fleshed out or anything like that. I’m still just considering all my options and we’ll have to see what comes out of it.”

In the meantime, the Sounders wait. Martins and Dempsey will return eventually, and their hypothetical Homegrown Player signing will hang in the background until this winter.

“Do you want to get yourself in a long-term commitment with another forward or do you want to provide potential future opportunities for (Morris)?” Lagerwey asked, rhetorically.

“We’ll do everything we can to sign Jordan if and when he’s ready. Whatever he decides, I’ll be able to sleep soundly knowing we did everything we could.”