We know the Sounders are capable of more

The events at the World Cup barge and pier were extraordinary. There’s no denying that. The Seattle Sounders can put on a party. Heck, we even saw one of the famous owners get up and DJ at one of the many parties.

That's a lot of fun. A memorable moment for a few hundred people almost every day for weeks on end. Convincing Sounder at Heart readers that the 2026 Men's World Cup was well staged in and around Puget Sound isn't hard. The Sounders made it even better. The events they hosted were spectacular.

Ciara. Drew Carey. Macklemore. Russell Wilson. These stars know how to put on a show – when they want to. They just don't seem to want to for Sounders games any more.

We also know the Seattle Sounders are capable of pulling in World Cup talents. Did they get the best of the best? No. Did they get people who performed on the greatest stage in the globe? Yes!

Alvaro Fernandez. Nicolás Lodeiro. Nelson Valdez. Raúl Ruidíaz. Blaise Nkufo.

No, not all of them worked out, but four of those five helped Seattle lift MLS Cups. It was an ambition and aggression in acquiring world talents that the club once displayed under GMs Adrian Hanauer and Garth Lagerwey, when Hanauer was and was not the controlling owner.

We also know that the club has a history of acquiring famous USMNT talent. They did so by hosting the United States here and leveraging that crowd. These moves also powered trophies.

Clint Dempsey. Eddie Johnson. Jesús Ferreira. Paul Arriola.

The club has a history of picking up players with local connections, too. They’ve been creative in signing them whether or not they lived here forever. Those men looked at the project and chose the Rave Green.

We've seen the club be aggressive and sign the famous because they were famous. A few players were marketing efforts as much as they were talents on the field. We know the Sounders are capable of this. They've shown the ambition and drive to do so.

Kasey Keller. Freddie Ljungberg.

We know the club is capable of winning trophies, of selling on youth talents, of nurturing and developing multiple national team players for multiple national teams.

DeAndre Yedlin. Jordan Morris. Cristian Roldan. Obed Vargas.

We know the club and city are capable of filling a stadium to face the Timbers. The records set for attendance took a World Cup to fall.

We know the community will turn out at 40,000+ for regular-season games because we were there. We watched it happen. Those crowds didn’t just convince talent to come to Seattle, it convinced non-soccer fans to come to games. Those parties dwindled like an untended campfire.

We know the club can lift trophies. They did it last year. It was amazing. It was a great reminder of what the Seattle Sounders have been. It was a day when the concourse was full of the smell of local foods, breeze off the Sound and 69,000 people who are proud to call themselves Sounders.

We know big marketing pushes. We know the team that invented North American pro soccer. We know that Craig can cook, even if he isn't right now. We know ownership, GMs and the business leadership can make public appearances clarifying their ambitions and plans – they're just not.

We know the Seattle Sounders are capable of a lot. There are billionaires involved to supply financing and ideas. There are stars involved to provide showmanship and pizzazz. There players capable of winning trophies and going to World Cups.

There are fans ready to show out like we did when the team decided it wanted to be a party.

Right now you're asking fans to renew their tickets. You probably expect they will. You'll ignore the empty-mall-like concourse, the limitations on entry, the lack of public statements about planning to be big while there is an undercurrent of downsizing.

Somehow in a summer that showed Seattle is thriving (World Cup hype, top 4 employment opportunities among major cities, state with the best GDP growth in the first half of the year) the Sounders are shrinking.

We know they're capable of more. We lived it. We want to live it every home match, every away match. We want that thrill of ambition as we're stuck in the upper left often ignored and never rivaled.

Gather that ownership family together. Gather that C-suite. Gather the marketing team and the soccer side of the house.

Tell us that the Sounders are capable and then show us.

We know you can do this because you have.

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Catching up on Sounder at Heart

Here's what you missed on the site since the Sounders were only 9 points back from first (that was ten days ago) rather than 15

Snag the World Cup issue of IV while you still can

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Defiance and local amateurs

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