In the years in which he found himself in the mix to play for a roster spot with the United States national team, former Sounders defender Brad Evans had to juggle a rather jammed up schedule. Like the time in 2013 when the now-retired Evans played a match for his club team on an August Saturday in Toronto, flew to Europe to play in a midweek U.S. match against Bosnia and Herzegovina in ...

Seattle Sounders defender Brad Evans celebrates a goal he assisted on in the second half against the Portland Timbers at CenturyLinkField in Seattle on Aug. 21, 2016.

Bettina Hansen/The Seattle Times/TNS

In the years in which he found himself in the mix to play for a roster spot with the United States national team, former Sounders defender Brad Evans had to juggle a rather jammed up schedule.

Like the time in 2013 when the now-retired Evans played a match for his club team on an August Saturday in Toronto, flew to Europe to play in a midweek U.S. match against Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, then flew back to the states and came on as a sub the following Saturday for a Sounders match in Houston.

“It was nuts. It was awesome,” Evans recalled, of literally flying around the world in a week.

It's an example of what players sometimes face if they want the chance to represent their country at the highest levels of international soccer.

The upcoming FIFA Men’s World Cup again puts a spotlight on the balance players must strike within their careers between what they do for their club — where they make their money — and the opportunities that come up to play for their country.

Weighing club vs. country is a delicate dance for everyone involved, especially in a year with a World Cup or a European Championships.

Players can’t risk seeing their performance slip while playing for their club team, for fear of not getting selected for the World Cup or other national team opportunities. At the same time, they have to guard against taking undue risks that could invite injury.

But club teams also have to try and win as many games as possible and can’t just sit key players or allow them to coast. They’re cognizant of players with national team or World Cup aspirations — possibly for the only time in their careers — but are also under their own pressures to achieve team goals, like finishing place in the league or avoiding relegation.

It’s a tricky balance for everyone involved. Sometimes it works out great. Sometimes, it can be a problem.

In the era before FIFA instituted specific breaks in the calendar for national team matches, former Sounder and U.S. goalkeeper Kasey Keller recalls a time when he was playing for Leicester City in England, but had to miss club matches to be part of the U.S. national team.

Keller recalls his Leicester City manager at the time telling him, “I don’t know if I would have signed you if I knew that you were going to miss matches for World Cup qualifying.”

“So you get into this awkward situation,” Keller said, adding that players “have to be removed from the situation, so when the national team is in charge, the national team on a FIFA date is the one that has control of you. And when it’s not a FIFA date, the club has control over you.

“And you have to be very strong and just say, ‘Take me out of the equation.’ Let them battle it out.”

Those awkward situations as Keller described can lead to hectic periods that are mentally and physically challenging.

Jet lag is a real thing when you’re traversing time zones to play in matches for different teams — though, flying first class with the national team helps. But when spots are so limited and opportunities scarce, it can lead to wild weeks like what Evans experienced more than a decade ago when he started in Seattle, flew to Toronto, then to Sarajevo, then to Houston and finally back to Seattle in one week — all in an effort to remain in consideration for a cherished roster spot on the national team.

But, it was all worth it, Evans says.

“I had 27 caps, games, over a 12-year career, and that's two games a year basically, and that's the only opportunity, like the real, legit opportunity, to actually play for that team,” Evans said. “When you break it down, just the percentages of the guys or women players that make it to that moment is so small.

“You don't realize it when you're in it. When you get out of it and you reflect, you're like: ‘Holy (expletive). That was a pretty big deal.’”

Jordan Morris knows it’s a big deal. Morris played his first national team game for the U.S. in 2014. He probably would have been on the World Cup roster in 2018 had the U.S. not faltered in qualification and after major injuries was able to get himself back into the national team picture four years ago with the 2022 Qatar World Cup on the horizon.

“I mean they both come with that pressure and that responsibility. I think it's only amplified when you're playing for your country, what it represents,” Morris said. “It's the goal of every kid growing up, I think, is to play for their national team, and I know I felt that responsibility and never took for granted what it meant to wear that jersey and listen to the national anthem before the game. I think it's just another level of intensity when you go into those games.”

It's also a different experience. Evans joked the only time he’s flown first class is when he was traveling for national team games. While the amenities around MLS have improved drastically in the past decade, playing for the national team usually comes with perks a notch higher. The hotels are a little nicer. The meals are a little better.

The camaraderie is also different. The stretches with the national team are intense periods where players from clubs all over the world come together for as little as two weeks — though it’s sometimes longer, especially during a World Cup year. It might be the only time those players see each other for months at a time.

“Everybody plays in a different country, different league, so you don't see each other a lot,” said Sounders midfielder Albert Rusnak, who made 38 appearances for Slovakia, the last coming in 2022. “When you meet at a national team, it's good to see everybody,”

“But then you only have a couple games, a couple days to prepare for a game, so also the preparation is hard on national teams to kind of train or try and do tactics. Everybody plays (differently) in their clubs, and then you kind of come together and you have a few days to figure it out.”

Morris said those extended national team camps ramp up the intensity even more than when the group comes together for a week or so.

“You're locked in the whole time you're there, because those are the only two weeks that you get to work together as a group,” Morris said this month, following a Sounders practice in Renton. “Obviously, when you're here, you come, and then you go home to your family, you're able to kind of decompress a little bit. But it's like a different level of intensity, because you're just locked in the whole time and everything's amplified.”