A guide to building your fantasy 2026 Sounders roster

By now you know that MLS is a salary cap league that uses a bunch of tools to avoid direct cap impacts for certain types of players. It can feel complex. Luckily for you, Sounder at Heart has a wonderful cap position and depth chart tab so you can ground your fantasies in some semblance of reality and seem like the smartest person in your friend group.

The tl;dr is that Waibel & Co. have about $1.6 million in cap space without selling someone. They have two open U22s that would hit that number at $200,000. There's also four open senior slots open (each U22 would take one). Essentially, if the Sounders add two U22s, whose transfer fees do not count towards the cap, they would be down to $1.2 million to spend on other needs.

The full regulations can be complicated.

Focusing on what Seattle can do and what they need (third DM, third CB, two keepers) can help you as you dream about the 2026 roster.

Exciting free agents are available. Many do not fit into the depth chart and roster structure. Consider the best header of soccer balls in MLS history is available. Adding Christian Benteke would be a lot of fun. He's likely looking for max TAM or so. That's the entirety of Seattle's available budget, one senior slot and still no support for those positions where backups are shallow.

Other players you could fantasize about might make more sense (and are grounded in reality). Hassani Dotson is now out of contract and Seattle is considering per Jeremiah. It is, of course, a question of pricing. Hassani was on about $625,000 last season and when healthy compares favorably to Cristian Roldan at the same age. Seattle may be very interested in a starting quality DM that improves the defense of the team since Obed Vargas will leave within 12 months (barring a miracle extension).

Backup keeper is going to be one of the easiest spaces to fill, even needing two. Talents like David Ochoa (whose extensive time-wasting with RSL sours him to most Seattle fans) are cheap and good.

Signees from outside the league will have to be on frees or U22s. Transfer fees impact the salary budget and that creates a similar situation to Benteke – the ability to add a single player when the needs are greater.

Transfering or trading within MLS opens up space, while also creating needs. The best situations might involve sale with a loan back (like what happened to DeAndre Yedlin way back in 2014) for players to stay with the Sounders for the CCC and spring before the Men's World Cup 2026.

Otherwise, every move opens up more gaps on the depth chart while adding more space to the salary budget.

Fantasy transfers are an amazing amount of fun. We can also ground them in reality while enjoying the speculation.