The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Seattle earns its soccer bona fides
Sounders are first MLS team to win CONCACAF Champions League.
SEATTLE — Everything broke right for the Sounders, who were prodded for nearly two hours of grinding action by a sea of Seattle fans in blue and green who pushed their trademark electric energy to the pitch.
This was history — and it felt like a joint effort between a team and its supporters.
For over 20 years, no Major League Soccer team had ever won the CONCACAF Champions League tournament, which includes the best teams from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. But the Sounders ended the drought with a Pacific Northwest downpour: a 3-0 win over Pumas of Mexico on Wednesday. How important was the win? During last week’s run-up to the match, Sounders GM Garth Lagerwey called it a chance at soccer immortality.
In a promotional hype video, none other than retired Seahawks icon Marshawn Lynch called it a “big (expletive) game.” At halftime Wednesday, with the Sounders ahead 1-0, MLS Commissioner Don Garber stood in his suite at Lumen Field and called this match the “biggest game in the history of the league.”
Since its inception in 1996, MLS has sought to become an American league of such quality that it could stand toe-to-toe with world powers. But until now, failure was a regular rite of passage for MLS in this annual tournament, with teams from the rival Mexican league having won the past 13 CONCACAF tournaments.
The Sounders buried those failures Wednesday.
Initially the match was choppy and bogged down by physical play that forced a pair of key Sounders, João Paulo and Nouhou Tolo, to leave with injuries. But Seattle flashed its trademark resilience. Goalie Stefan Frei, named the tournament’s most valuable player, backed up a stout defense, and the Sounders kept up the attack until forward Raul Ruidiaz scored on a deflected shot late in the half. In the 80th minute, Ruidiaz added another goal off a smooth counterattack.
Nicolás Lodeiro sealed the victory with a goal in the 88th minute and ran toward the stands to celebrate among a frenzy of fans.
Winning qualifies the team for the FIFA Club World Cup, a tournament stacked with soccer royalty. The Premier League’s Chelsea won it last. Either Liverpool or Real Madrid will represent Europe next. Just being in the same draw as teams of that pedigree is entirely new for MLS.
Since entering MLS during a wave of expansion in 2009, the Sounders have enchanted a soccer-rich city by winning two MLS Cup championships in four runs to the finals. Seattle has led the league in attendance in all but two seasons, with area fans bringing the same fervor as Seahawks fans have come to be known for. A tournament-record 68,741 fans showed up to watch the home team play Pumas.
The love felt by this city for soccer — from the Sounders to O.L. Reign of the NWSL, to colleges and junior leagues — is also the product of a specific past and a specific team: the original Seattle Sounders of the long-defunct North American Soccer League. From 1974 to 1983, those Sounders teams were part of the first effort to bring big stakes, U.S.based competition to professional soccer within this hemisphere.
On Wednesday night, nearly an hour after the game, fans remained in Lumen Field. Vast swathes of them. Joyful chants rumbled down to the confetti-covered field. Players responded by lifting the gold Champions League trophy high.