Even before the Seattle Sounders’ struggles had reached their current depths – they are in the midst of a franchise-worst 12-game winless run – there was a general consensus inside the front office that an infusion of talent was badly needed.
Basically since the Covid-19 pandemic, the Sounders have been the least active MLS teams on the transfer market. Their 53 player additions from outside the organization are by far the fewest in MLS, and only the notoriously frugal San Jose Earthquakes have spent less on transfers in that time.
The time, it seemed, had finally come to change that.
In a sense, it did. The Sounders broke their four-summer streak of failing to sign a player from outside the organization when they worked out a $6 million "cashfer" for Dejan Joveljić. That’s easily the Sounders’ best bit of summer business since 2018 when they picked up Raúl Ruidíaz, and it’s entirely possible Joveljić will prove to be an even better acquisition.
But the Sounders clearly had plans for more acquisitions. In his open letter to fans, majority owner Adrian Hanauer strongly implied Joveljić's signing was just the beginning and head coach Brian Schmetzer has all but confirmed those intentions in various interviews. That the only other move the Sounders ended up making was a virtually zero-cost trade for Caden Clark – a talented player who is now playing for his fifth organization since 2022 and has barely seen the field this year – has to be seen as a disappointment.
Through various discussions with multiple people inside the Sounders front office, I’ve been able to get a sense of what went right and wrong during this transfer window. Here’s what I learned:
Money came late
Coming out of the World Cup break, my understanding is there was still no set transfer budget. That doesn’t mean there was literally no money, but that the front office had not been given a set amount that could be spent however seemed most prudent. In his last on-the-record interview with Sounder at Heart in 2024, Hanauer said he remains intimately involved with the roster-building strategy. This would seem to be an example of that type of oversight.
Essentially, that means the Sounders could scout and talk to players. They were able to assess who was available and generally how much they might cost, but the approach seems to have contributed to the relatively slow-moving process.
