Seatle Sounders: The Golden Child of the MLS

On March 19 at Seattle's Quest Field the MLS's new franchise, The Seattle Sounders, opened the 2009 MLS season against the New York Red Bulls. It came as surprise to many that the Sounders pulled a huge 3-0 upset against the Red Bulls that night. I was thrilled to see a new team with some big potential make a huge entrance into the MLS, the fact that im from Washington State made me even more excited. However, i wasnt sure if The Sounders could keep it up. But they did the very next weekend with a 2-0 win against Real Salt Lake. This weekend Seatle continued their winning streak with another convincing 2-0 win against Toronto in their first away game. The Sounder's success in these first few weeks has been phenomenal and has in many ways restored some of my faith in the MLS's future potential. All MLS teams could do well to learn a few things from the Sounder's example.

First of all the Sounder's have had a ton of help from the Seattle community, especially from Drew Carey who wanted to built an MLS team that was more like a European team instead of a typical MLS team. Carey not only helped financially, but also built up the hype surrounding the Sounder's opening game. The end result was a sold out season opener. The biggest question for me concerns the success of the actual team. There really isn't very much that stands out about the Sounder's roster. They picked up Steve Zakuani as the first pick of the 2008 draft, and Kasey Keller and Fredrik Ljungberg took up the roles of the experienced players on the team. However the big star that emerged was Freddy Montero. The Columbian youngster score two goals in the opener followed by another in the game against Real Salt Lake. The Sounder's capability on offense allows them to score plenty of goals, while the team's defense with the help of Keller's goal keeping hasn't given up a single goal this season. The Sounders now lead the western conference of the MLS with Chivas at 9 points each. The Sounders will play their next game against San Diego on the 25th of April at Quest Field. I hope that the Sounders are able to continue their unbeaten run and maybe bring about some change into the MLS.