The Seattle Sounders have made a handful of signings since the 2025 season ended, but it’s hard to argue that the roster is necessarily stronger on paper than it was this time last year. Hassani Dotson and Nikola Petković have joined the team, filling out a central midfield group that’s seen Danny Leyva, João Paulo and Obed Vargas all depart. Ryan Sailor came in as a free agent to effectively replace Jonathan Bell; Max Anchor has been added to the goalkeeping depth chart; and Sebastian Gomez and Yu Tsukanome both moved up to the first team from Tacoma Defiance to basically replace Ryan Kent. Beyond that, any further additions are likely to be more depth pieces to fill out the roster, but there are still high-level players with the potential to have a greater impact this season than they had in 2025.
It’s a cliché, but these guys could all be like new signings for one reason or another going into the new season.
Paul Arriola
The first player here is the one who will be most like a new player this season. That’s because he only played 74 league minutes across two games in 2025, and only 319 minutes across all comps. But in that time he had a pair of goals to help the Sounders beat Antigua Guatemala in the first round of Concacaf Champions Cup, and throughout his limited appearances, he looked like a potential game-changer working on the left wing for a new-look Sounders side. That was all blown up when he tore his ACL during the second leg of the CCC series against Cruz Azul.
Among the bunch of players vying for time on Seattle’s wings — either as a winger, wide forward or wingback — Arriola isn’t the biggest, fastest or strongest, but he brings to whatever role he’s asked to play a wealth of experience from Liga MX, MLS, and the USMNT. He’s canny and cunning, willing to battle and combine with the players around him. During the early flashes we saw last season his familiarity and chemistry with Jesús Ferreira helped to make the team more dangerous, combining on both of his goals. The 31-year-old Arriola provides veteran know-how and a demonstrated ability to help put the ball in the back of the net, with an average of 0.43 goal contributions (38 goals and 30 assists, according to MLS) in 14,224 regular season and playoff minutes in the league.
Arriola may not light up the scoreboard at the same rate as the team’s other attacking players, but if he can stay healthy enough to play a significant role he’ll make his presence felt. Since moving to D.C. United in 2017 he’s had six seasons where he played over 1,300 minutes and he had double-digit goal contributions (including secondary assists, per MLS) in four of them. With his experience and his presence in the locker room and on the training field, he’ll help to build up and push the players around him as well.
Jordan Morris
Jordan Morris may seem like a strange inclusion here after playing 1,022 minutes in the league between regular season and the playoffs with 7 goals and 2 assists, including 2 goals during the playoff series against Minnesota United. It was a very solid output, averaging 0.79 goal contributions per 90 minutes in the league. Between his absences due to injuries combined with the explosion of Danny Musovski and the emergence of Osaze De Rosario, it’s easy to forget that Morris tied the same scoring record of 18 goals across all competitions in 2024 that Musovski reached in 2025.
After competing with Raúl Ruidíaz for the spot, Morris earned his place as Seattle’s line-leading striker. He looked more than capable of picking up where he’d left off, but injuries repeatedly derailed his progress last year. He finished the year strong with 3 goals in the final 4 games, and showed what Seattle had missed in his absence. Even if he doesn’t have the same top-end speed or explosiveness that made him so dangerous earlier in his career, he still has pace that none of Seattle’s strikers can match, allowing him to stretch the field and opposing defenses to create space for the rest of the Sounders attack.
If Morris can stay healthy, hopefully avoiding any more freak collisions with GKs, in the more flowing attack that Seattle started to showcase last season it’s not difficult to imagine him improving on that 2024 performance. Beyond his ability to score goals and set up teammates, Morris also provides more of a presence on set pieces, both defending and attacking, than Musovski, which could serve to improve the team’s performance in dead ball situations. The team’s star striker is back, and there’s every reason to expect him to show why the team made him a Designated Player.
