Sounders fans at the MLS Cup in Toronto
Photo: Matt Warso /prostamerika.com
Cascadia Corner: This one is for the fans
Nothing can reduce the unbridled elation felt among Sounders fans this Monday morning as they head to work. For many, it will be the first interaction with those unaware of what was achieved in Toronto on Saturday night.
Many will be attempting to explain why they are walking on clouds to the uninitiated for the first time. Additionally because of the very late run to success, many Sounders fans spent much of the summer already thinking about next season. Put another way, they haven’t had much time to prepare for this, not in 2016. However with eight successive playoff appearances since joining MLS, there is a counter argument that they have had nearly a decade.
Sounders’ MLS Cup win can be viewed through two entirely different historical perspectives.
Firstly, it can be viewed through the prism of 2016, the season that started poorly, worsened and only improved after a coaching change. Also there is a broader historical prism. It’s been nine years since Seattle Sounders won the USL national title. Since then, they have qualified for the playoffs every single year in whatever league they were in. It is a franchise that has set high standards for itself without ever reaching the peak of those expectations.
In that time, their fans have had to endure the twin indignities of seeing Portland win the MLS Cup and watching on as their co-tenants and former part owners, Seattle Seahawks won their equivalent of MLS Cup, the Superbowl. Those two events rankled albeit in very different ways and for very different reasons.
The Seahawks win reaffirmed Sounders FC as very much the junior franchise in the last measuring criterion in which they were not already lagging – on field success. Although everyone at Sounders FC loyally wore their civic smiles, it was a harbinger of troubled times for the soccer franchise. The Seahawks decided to jettison Sounders FC immediately after that to (understandably) focus on monetizing their triumph. That damaged Sounders FC who had to hurriedly start hiring their own folk for many tasks, all of whom had to be trained quickly and at the same time.
Sounders, to their credit, never complained and just got on with it. It was a genuine excuse for snafus and they never used it.
However, to Adrian Hanauer’s external credit, he turned that lemon into lemonade, and began to make some excellent hires, including moving himself to the job he did for the USL club and was always destined to do in MLS, Majority Owner of the Emerald City’ soccer franchise.
Many of us will recall that he was a very good MO of the USL club. His style of leadership is far more self-effacingly Cascadian than Hollywood Joe Roth’s braggadocio. Hanauer is Seattle through and through. Although Roth understood perfectly how to persuade people to part with their money, that effort had always been backed by the smooth purr of the Seahawks’ commercial juggernaut. The task was to ‘rip it up and start again’ without anyone outside noticing. Hanauer and his organisation did that very well
He brought in Garth Lagerwey, the best General Manager in Major League Soccer, and quietly and under the radar, did the same in a very other important area, Communications. Per Anthony Totera of Toronto’s Red Card podcast, TFC were expecting 300 journalists at BMO Field. Rest assured, this very important interaction from the club to those who would spread the gospel was in the safest possible hands on Sunday night.
Like Jordan Morris, Sounders FC’ have improved quicker than many dared to hope
Matthew Warso
We have not yet seen the full return on Lagerwey’s thinking as GM. In many ways, this MLS Cup win came a year before even the most optimistic thought it possible. In a quieter moment, Lagerwey might confess to being surprised at the early arrival of his own success. Publicly, he will deflect credit and praise everybody else which merely proves that he’s learning to be a Cascadian already!
That brings me to the initial indignity mentioned.
Although it makes no difference financially that the noisy neighbours won MLS Cup first, it makes a difference in every other aspect, especially to the supporters. Portland had entered the league two years later. Their victory blew up the excuse that Expansion Clubs needed time to catch up. Sounders fans had to suffer the inevitable taunting, which is all part of having local rivals but proves the adage so true, that “it’s better to give than receive.”
It’s only lasted 12 months. It could have been 24, 36 or even more. This MLS Cup win is for the fans, far more than it would have been in other circumstances. League history, at least the part written by outsiders, will lean towards talk of “The Era of Cascadian” domination as opposed to “Portland’s Historic Win”. The two triumphs will be grouped together more, than would be if Sounders had won in 2017 or later. Sounders FC had one chance, and one chance only, to reduce the suffering that 2105 win induced. And their team took it.
That this was also done in Zach Scott’s last year, the only one who can claim to a genuine and professional antagonism toward the Oregon club makes it all the sweeter. He has dealt with his ‘unfinished business’.
No article on Sounders MLS Cup win would be complete without talking about Brian Schmetzer and Sigi Schmid; the first of the two historical prisms, the one that views the triumph merely thorough the events of 2016.
Tomorrow, I’ll look at the legacy that Schmid bequeathed and at what the future holds for Brian Schmetzer, along with some of my memories of 2007, Seattle Sounders and Brian Schemtzer’s last national trophy.
Also See:
Sounders don’t need goals or shots to deserve MLS Cup victory
Champions: Sounders FC win MLS Cup
