SEATTLE — Leo Messi has faced the Seattle Sounders before. Back in 2009 during the Sounders' inaugural MLS season, the Argentinian played for FC Barcelona who came to town for a friendly. Nearly 67,000 showed up to watch Barça beat the Sounders 4-0, with Messi scoring two and Sergio Busquets adding another.
Paul Rothrock, then 10 years old, attended the game with his family. They sat in the 300 section. He remembers a crowd that was pro Sounders but one that also featured plenty of Barcelona and Argentina jerseys, too.
When the Sounders host Messi, Busquets and Inter Miami today in the Leagues Cup final, the crowd will be almost as big but surely far more partisan.
“I think it’s going to be mostly a green crowd,” Rothrock said. “Messi’s definitely added another factor to this. I’m sure he’s helping get the stadium full, but people are coming out to root for the Sounders and we’re super excited about that.
“I don’t think any of us are scared of them.”
The contrast the Sounders offer Miami in terms of roster-building strategy is almost comical. While Miami has built the league’s oldest — and perhaps most talented — roster around Messi and some of his friends from his days at Barcelona and the Argentina national team, the Sounders have a mined virtually every peculiar acquisition method in MLS around a core of local talent.
Among the Sounders’ expected starters are three players who were born here, another who moved here when he was just 13 and two others who moved here for college. The starting goalkeeper was a draft pick and the starting forward first signed with Tacoma Defiance before earning a first-team contract this year. That leaves just three of the 11 starters who were established professionals when they joined the Sounders. The bench will likely include at least another five players the Sounders developed either through their academy or Defiance.
You get the distinct sense that Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer prefers it this way.
“Messi is, arguably, the best player that the world has ever seen,” Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer dead-panned on Friday. “But we have Paul Rothrock, and we have Jackson Ragen, and we have Snyder Brunell, and we have Andrew Thomas…”
There’s an almost saccharine element to a quote like that, almost too on-the-nose even for a coach who has always slung around platitudes like “next man up” with remarkable ease.
But strip away the cliché element and there’s a message that seems to have genuinely resonated with the players.
“Talking about the way the locker room here is built and I know guys have said it in the past, but we have an incredibly tight group of players as a a result of the way we built this team,” Thomas said. “You’ll find 30 guys on the roster that are going to fight for 90 minutes — plus penalties if we need it — for each other, which doesn’t always happen if you built things a different way.”
While GM Craig Waibel was very purposeful in how he assembled the depth, the degree to which the Sounders have had to rely on it was thrust upon them.
Coming into the season, many pundits thought the Sounders were among the deepest teams. But they’ve pushed that to a rather absurd length.
In 39 games across all competitions, the Sounders have fielded 38 different lineups, mostly because of injuries up and down the roster. There are 24 players who have logged at least 300 all-competition minutes and 27 who have made at least two starts.
Since the start of Leagues Cup, the Sounders have averaged more than five changes to the starting lineup per match and have gone 6-1-1 while averaging 2.75 goals per game. Just in that small timeframe, they’ve gotten goals from 10 different players.
It almost seems like the deeper they dig into their roster, the more impressive the results become.
“We like how we’re playing, our system’s working well,” Rothrock said. “The strength of our collective is really special and I think everyone can feel a different energy with this team right now. It’s fun to be around. Our individual success is becoming each other’s success. People are excited about each and every one of our teammates stepping up in different moments.”
Part of what the players seem to have responded to is Schmetzer’s willingness to let go of the reins a little.
Under Schmetzer, the Sounders have usually been defined by a hard-nosed, defense-first style that closely mirrors his own profile as a player. What has been remarkable this year is how they’ve become far more expansive, even if they’re holding onto his DNA.
No longer quite as worried about keeping opponents from getting into the open field, the Sounders have been far more aggressive with their press and freely push numbers into the attack.
When it works, they can overwhelm even high-quality opponents like Cruz Azul. Over their past 12 games, they’ve scored three or more goals on six different occasions. But it can also lead to some chaotic situations. In that same stretch, they’ve allowed two more more goals in five games, including one in which they blew a 3-0 lead at home to the Colorado Rapids. It marked the first time in their 17 MLS seasons that they had failed to secure a win in a game they led by at least three goals.
As different as Miami’s roster strategy is, their playing style is vaguely similar. Unsurprisingly, given the talent, they score a ton of goals and lead MLS with 2.16 goals per game. Although not quite as solid defensively as the Sounders, they do hold a similarly high line and can be pretty aggressive. Add it together, and it seems to have the makings of a highly watchable affair.
“It’s going to be be a fight,” Thomas said. “It’s going to be physical. We’re going to find ways to raise that intensity.”
The Sounders are counting on the crowd to be part of that.
This will be the 10th time the Sounders have drawn at least 60,000 fans since joining MLS. In those nine previous games, the Sounders are 8-0-1. This will also be the sixth cup final they’ve hosted at Lumen Field — including the 2005 USL title — and they won the previous five.
In a season in which they’ve stood toe-to-toe with the reigning champions of South America, Europe and Concacaf, there’s no reason for the Sounders to be intimidated.
“We’re gonna be up against a really good test, and that’s gonna gonna test us in some different ways,” Rothrock said. “We’re excited about that challenge there.
“We also get what we’re representing. We’re not just representing Seattle. We’re representing a style, an identity that I think a lot of people stand for, and a lot of people are rooting for.”
