Summer was once the time of abundance for the Seattle Sounders. It was when they signed Clint Dempsey, Nicolás Lodeiro and Raúl Ruidíaz. There was a time when I felt it was silly to dismiss almost any rumor out of hand because summer was when the Sounders could pull off miracles.
It has been a long time since I felt that way.
The last time the Sounders made an international summer signing was 2021, when they brought in Léo Chú, then added Nicolás Benezet in a trade just for good measure. Over the next three summers, the only moves the Sounders made were internal, promoting players from Tacoma Defiance.
With nine days left in this summer’s window — it closes on Aug. 21 — it’s starting to look like we may be facing a similar situation. I know the Sounders have made at least two firm offers — and probably more — in an attempt to sign a U22 forward from abroad. They agreed to a fee with FC Utrecht on Noah Ohio, but the Netherlands youth international chose to remain in Europe. My understanding is they got even closer to signing 19-year-old Serbian youth international Milos Lukovic, with the player and team agreeing to terms only for someone higher up the Chelsea/Strasbourg food-chain to nix it.
The Lukovic deal just fell through recently and while there’s theoretically still time to make something happen — and it does look like they’re trying — I can’t say I’m horribly optimistic.
When Niko Moreno and I discussed this situation on the most recent episode of Nos Audietis, we both left with the strong sense that the most likely addition the Sounders will end up making this summer is more of a support-role type of player from within MLS.
As disappointing as that would be — and let’s not beat around the bush, it would be deeply frustrating — I do think there needs to be some context around it.
The jealousy factor
Let’s just get this out of the way up front: part of why the summer transfer window is so frustrating is that seemingly every other team is finding ways to make moves. In fact, literally every team has made at least one international summer signing. Even if you expand out to include the winter transfer window, the Sounders have only paid a significant fee for Pedro de la Vega in that time. While the $6.5 million they paid to get de la Vega isn’t chump change — and could still prove to be a relative bargain — that’s also basically table-stakes at this point in MLS.
Just in the past week, we’ve seen LAFC commit well over $30 million to sign South Korean star Son Heung-min, the Vancouver Whitecaps convince Thomas Müller to join them on a TAM deal and Inter Miami somehow figuring out how to add Rodrigo De Paul as a de-facto fourth Designated Player.
But it’s not just the high-profile moves. Teams like the New England Revolution, Sporting KC, Colorado Rapids and San Jose Earthquakes are routinely showing more willingness to spend than the Sounders.
There was a time when the Sounders were the team pushing the envelope in terms of what kind of player would be willing to come to MLS, but there have been two presidential elections since anyone would suggest the Sounders made a move in that class.
This isn’t just about on-field results — which have been pretty good if we’re being honest — there’s also a public-relations aspect to this. The Sounders seem to have stalled their downward trajectory in terms of attendance, but I think the lack of attention-grabbing moves goes a long way toward explaining why attendance is down about 30% compared to 2017. Making splashy moves is one way to grab that attention.
We’ve got DeRo at home
To their credit, it seems like ownership was more willing to spend real money on a transfer fee this summer than they were last year, when I was told there was virtually no budget. But Sounders GM Craig Waibel put down a marker earlier this year when he effectively said he was only interested in bringing in a player who could make the team better now.
The bar that player needed to clear has only gotten higher in the months since, not only because Danny Musovski has been playing the best soccer of his career, but Osaze De Rosario is also looking like a promising player.
De Rosario’s emergence adds a particular complication. The 24-year-old may not have a ton more upside than he’s already flashed, but he’s also scored three goals in less than 250 first-team minutes while also showing off some impressive ability to put himself in dangerous areas. It’s not like De Rosario’s production has just come out of nowhere, either. Prior to signing with the first team, he had scored 10 goals in about 1,100 minutes for Defiance this year while all the underlying numbers suggested he wasn’t just in a nice vein of form.
If the Sounders are going to spend millions of dollars to bring in a young forward, they need to feel pretty confident that the player will be not only a longterm improvement over De Rosario but also be able to push him for minutes now.
I have no doubt that an international signing who burst onto the scene the way De Rosario has would be welcomed with intense hype. Instead, he gets put into a similar box as last year’s “big” Defiance signing Georgi Minoungou. I’m not necessarily blaming anyone for doing that, but I do think it’s a fair framing.
The good news is that I think the two players I've been able to confirm they came closest to signing fit that criteria. Both had notable youth international careers with reasonably productive professional seasons under their belts. The trick is those kinds of players will always pose complications in terms of acquisition, which we've seen play out here.
