Sounders Mining Unique Foreign Shores

we found Rosales and montero and hurtado and many others and we have the best crowd in MLS

Scouting Scandanavia. Booyah!

I’ve said it before, the Sounders are one of the better talent acquisition and developing teams around in all sports, not just in MLS. Watching how they go out and find quality people as well as bring up people who get better while they’re here is a big part of my enjoyment of being a fan. After years of utter fail by the Mariners, or horrible drafting by the Seahawks, it is such a treat to see the Sounders FO do their jobs. They aren’t perfect, but they are consistently coming up with quality finds. Kudos to you all. And I dont think they’d be able to do it without us filling the stadium so kudos to us too. :)

I was just thinking today with all the rumors going about us scouting in Latin America, it’s ironic our apparent 3 signings thus far his offseason have all been European.

I’ve been wracking my head over one thing in your table, though. You list there being three players having come from Western Europe. I recall Nkufo and Gspurning, but for the life of me can’t think of the third (unless you are including Zakuani in there).

Especially the lutefisk tacos.

You have mistakenly counted only three Scandinavians. The MLS map shows one from Norway, one from Sweden, and two from Denmark. That is four altogether. And although Finland is not technically part of Scandinavia, it needs to be counted in that group as that is where it culturally belongs (definitely not part of Eastern Europe). You could even say Nordic countries instead of Scandinavia.

The quality of MLS is similar to the Scandinavian leagues, so any player that is doing well in a Scandinavian league can be expected to be a solid player in the MLS. Moreover, Scandinavians are used to a physical style of playing, so that aspect of MLS wont be a problem for them.

But perhaps most importantly, MLS can offer competitive salaries for players coming out from Scandinavia. Around $100,000 is going to be a very attractive salary for many MLS quality players in those leagues.

Therefore I would not agree with the statement that Scandinavia is a region where MLS teams should not be able to attract players from. Quite the contrary in fact. It seems like an obvious market that has not been used as much as it could and perhaps should. The only negative is that I think a player coming from Latin America or Africa is much more likely to want to settle down in the USA, and therefore more likely to stay with the Sounders for several years. A Scandinavian is always going to plan to go back home eventually, and in many cases the thinking initially might be to just play out the initial contract and then go back. In that respect it seems smart for the Sounders to make a three year contract with Johansson. Of course plans can always change during that time, but I would assume that right now his idea is that he’ll play three seasons and then go back.

I also like the sources how Johansson and Sivebaek were scouted. Johansson has the same agent as Friberg, so hopefully that will continue to be resource for the Sounders. And of course Sivebaek was first discovered during the La Manga Cup in the 2010 preseason. Perhaps the Sounders should try to get there again, maybe in 2013.

attracting players from Nordic (and Austrian) countries.

And the latitude of Austria is almost the same as Seattle, so at least day length is similar. http://www.mapsofworld.com/lat_long/austria-lat-long.html