With the hiring of Garth Lagerwey, the major work of the 2015 Alliance Council was establishing how long it would be before there was a retention vote for the new President of Soccer. That was established as four years, requiring a minimum of 40% of the Alliance voting and two-thirds of those voting the GM out. Methodology to conduct a recall after year two was also established. All of that was revealed at the End of Year Business Meeting.
In their final recap of the EoYBM and the 2015 season the Council revealed some more nuggets in the previously unanswered questions.
Currently there is nothing scheduled to host any EPL teams, and the international friendly will depend on how far Sounders FC advances into the CONCACAF knockout rounds.
To further clarify season ticket holders have 19 games in their package. Seventeen of those are the MLS regular season games, one is the CCL match against Club America and the other will either be another CCL match or a friendly. That friendly opponent will not be a club from the Premier League.
In the MLS era Sounders FC previously hosted Chelsea (twice), Manchester United, and Tottenham Hotspur. Their non-EPL CenturyLink friendly opponents are the less exciting grouping of FC Barcelona, Boca Juniors, Celtic, Chivas, and Tijuana Xolos. They also had preseason friendlies against Juagures and FC Edmonton.
The flame towers are a unique experience to Seattle and we have no plans to remove them any time soon.
Q: Is there any intentions to upgrade the teams benches from the metal ones to a padded comfortable seat like most clubs around the league seem to use?
A: This is something we are looking to implement for 2016.
For fans this is merely a cosmetic thing, but it could be a minor sway for talent to sign or stay.
Council also reviewed their own performance. Six of the 32 members didn't attend a single meeting. Only the first two meetings had more than half of Council in attendance. Even with the reduced quorum requirements they failed to have enough people to act on five occasions.
On a personal note only eight of the current Council served with me back when I was the Vice-President.
If you are voting for Council you may want to consider the individuals' ability to attend meetings. I would not presume that one must go to all of them, but half seems a reasonable number to expect from your representation to ownership.