The Seattle Sounders overcame Lionel Messi-led Inter Miami in the Leagues Cup Final at Lumen Field through the strength of the “Sounders Way.” That meant hard work and full commitment from every player on the field, trusting the guys around them to do their jobs and have their backs; it also meant that while Messi was surrounded by former Barcelona teammates, a current Argentina teammate, and plenty of exciting talent from around the world, Seattle’s squad was largely developed locally in one way or another.
That local development has drawn the most attention, and for good reason. Six of the players in the Starting XI either came through the academy or Tacoma Defiance, with another three such players subbing into the game. Add in Alex and Cristian Roldan, who were both drafted by the Sounders out of Seattle colleges before developing in the first team, and the local roots in the squad only grow stronger. Those local roots didn’t just provide the foundation for Seattle’s squad in the final, they added the necessary punch to lift the trophy as all three goals came from Seattle’s player pathway one way or another – Osaze De Rosario and Paul Rothrock’s goals bracketed a penalty won by Georgi Minoungou and put away by Alex Roldan.
The Sounders have become one of the best in MLS when it comes to using their player development pathway to not only fill out their roster, but compete for and win trophies. In total, the roster has 10 players who joined the organization through the academy, five more who came through the Defiance and three others who were drafted out of college.
It’s easy to assume or imagine that there must be some secret ingredient in Seattle’s recipe for success – and maybe there is something in the waters of the Puget Sound that fuels it – but Director of Development Wade Webber insists there’s not anything particularly groundbreaking to their approach.
“It's a testament to the fact that we're vertically, absolutely aligned,” explains Webber. "What our youngest academy players get in the gym and our best young academy players get in support is First Team-dictated. 'We need these exercises. We need these activities that they're doing that will make them closer to our level.'"
Logistics management
As Director of Development, Webber’s role is less focused on direct interactions with young players in the organization than his previous positions within the Sounders may have been, he was previously an academy and Tacoma Defiance coach. These days, his primary function is managing the logistics for the staff operating under him, making sure that they have the access, information and resources necessary to support the players. Unsurprisingly, as a result Webber pointed to two individuals in particular as major contributors to the club’s success in developing players: Head of Professional Development Craig Dalrymple and Director of Performance Adam Centofanti.
Dalrymple joined the Sounders organization in April 2024, coming to the club after helping to set up the Inter Miami Academy, serving as the director of their academy from 2021 until his move to Seattle. Before Miami. Dalrymple spent a decade with the Vancouver Whitecaps organization.
“If you were to identify in the Whitecaps system who's responsible for Alphonso Davies? It's Craig,” Webber explains. "Craig recruited him from Edmonton ... he managed the progression through the academy into the first team. He even was first team interim head coach. They had fired somebody and he took over for the rest of the year and then went back to that role.
"You know, Alphonso's progression, and then Vancouver's willingness to play him in the first team on a really regular schedule – even before he was maybe 100% ready – made him more ready, and then the transfer,” were all attributable to Dalrymple’s guidance and influence.
As Webber describes it, the improvement and impact of players like Paul Rothrock, Minoungou, De Rosario and Snyder Brunell all point back to the work that Dalrymple has done with them. Part of that improvement is owed to the implementation of Individual Development Plans, or IDPs, a tool that is ever-present in professional soccer, but the difference in their effectiveness for Seattle is the commitment to actually utilizing those plans.
"Okay, every club has IDPs, and probably even youth clubs have IDPs, but they're almost fake documents that you create because you're told you have to have them, and then they sit on the shelf and you don't do anything with them,” Webber says. "What Craig has done, and ... what we're doing that is a little different ... like identifying, okay, who are the ones who are close, and we need to give them more. We need to have a clear game plan for them to make them as robust, strong, explosive as they can be. But there are not a lot of other clubs that have this ability to have a conversation with the head coach of the first team, with the performance coach of the first team."
Implementing the plan
The performance coach in question there is Centofanti.
"He's the head of our performance department, so, the gym, their physical preparation,” as Webber puts it. "And I have worked closely with him for several years now, just about the concept of: we need to make sure that when a player comes into our first team to train ... if you're an academy kid or you're a Defiance kid, they have to be physically ready. And so we're doing more and more in the gym.
"I think our new facility [Longacres], the fact that the club is invested in, like, a gym for the development side. The first team gym is like a palace. It's so big, it's got so much equipment. It supports their needs. But we have a development gym as well, and we have guys everyday working at being the best athlete they can because it's all well and good, you being technically sufficient, but if you're not strong and explosive, you just can't compete. Certainly not in MLS.”
Centofanti is the one making sure that players are up to the physical task of training and competing with MLS players. Webber credits him with getting De Rosario to the place where he is physically dominating LA Galaxy defenders in a Leagues Cup semifinal.
"If we get two or three [players] every year raising the floor of the first team, I think that's a job well done,” Webber explains. "The one, I would give the example of raising the floor ... I love Dylan Teves. I coached him in the Academy. He's a great human. He works so hard. But Georgi Minoungou is a better player than Dylan Teves. And he's ... younger. ... And so if we can put a Georgi Minoungou into the first team, that raises the floor.
