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So, what do the Sounders do for an encore?
“I guess the first answer is to avoid the sophomore jinx,” majority owner Joe Roth said this week. “… Certainly the weakness of the team last year was goal-scoring. We had the best defense in the league along with Houston, but we just didn’t score enough goals. We got knocked off in the playoffs by not scoring against Houston in about 10 million minutes. It was a very frustrating day. And to that end, (we) have looked all over the place for a striker or offensive midfielders.”
And the Sounders found one in Blaise Nkufo, who has scored more than 200 goals for his club teams and with the Swiss national team.
However, the club’s top offseason acquisition won’t arrive until mid-July. And that means the Sounders will open their second season at Qwest Field tonight against the expansion Philadelphia Union with a roster almost indistinguishable from the one that ended last season with that 1-0 overtime loss in Houston.
“Expectations always grow,” coach Sigi Schmid said. “You want to continue to build on the nucleus of players that you have put together. … We are always looking at any other options for us and anything else we can do to improve our team. … It’s more about individuals improving; and as individuals improve, then we improve as a team.”
However, Roth’s vision of improvement reaches beyond MLS.
“There’s no question that our goal as we’re building is to end up with an international team, a team that will travel and make an impact as a traveling team,” he said. “Some of it we will see this year because we won U.S. Open Cup and so we are going to play CONCACAF (Champions League). The record of MLS teams in CONCACAF is miserable and hopefully we’ll go further. Again, it’s a process that requires excellence on the field.”
Roth believes that Major League Soccer’s salary cap should actually benefit Seattle’s goal of consistent excellence. With all MLS clubs limited to similar payrolls, Roth said the Sounders should be able to spend that fixed amount of money better because of their emphasis on world-wide scouting and international signings.
He cites the acquisitions of Fredy Montero and Freddie Ljungberg last season and Nkufo this season.
He also said the Sounders will always be interested in pursuing as many designated players as the league allows.
“I think the fan base and the fact that it’s so popular here will always allow us to go out and get players,” Roth said.
And as the Sounders head into their second season, there is no indication that their MLS-record popularity has waned. In fact, their record attendance of last season seems certain to be topped this season, because the club has increased capacity at Qwest Field to about 35,500 by opening the lower rows of the upper deck. Roth said he hopes even that capacity will increase before the season is out.
However, Roth – a man who made his fortune in Hollywood – also knows how unpredictable entertainment preferences can be.
“How do we keep the magic going with the fans: I don’t know the answer,” he said. “We’ll keep doing the march to the match and the golden scarf and keep in touch with our fans. … Anybody who tells you they know how it’s going to end up, they’re either lying or much smarter than I am. … I hope it will carry on. It’s just hard to know. The Green Bay Packers will carry on no matter what. We just don’t want to be like a restaurant in L.A. where there’s a big line one day and they’re bankrupt the next.”
For now, there’s no indication of that.
However, the Sounders’ ability to leap forward in their second season may be limited by how much they did right in Year 1. Their 12-7-11 record was second-best among MLS expansion teams, and their average home attendance of 30,897 was a league record.
So the question lingers: What do they do for an encore?
“When you’re successful, it’s doing everything incrementally better, it’s that last 5 to 10 percent every year,” general manager Adrian Hanauer said. “An organization that’s a disaster has an easier time with the low-hanging fruit. For us, I think there’s not so much low-hanging fruit left because we had such a great organization to start with. … But there’s always things.”
Don Ruiz, 253-597-8808
blog.thenewstribune.com/soccer
