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Fredy Montero's time at Sporting CP has been a bit of a roller-coaster. He started off blazing hot, scoring 13 goals in his first 12 league matches, but then endured a 23-match scoreless drought. Montero followed that up by scoring seven in the following 13 matches before going scoreless in his past six. It's a routine Seattle Sounders fans are probably used to, being as he enjoyed similar bouts of hot and cold while he was here.
It now appears as though Montero's recent cold streak has at least made him expendable in the eyes of Sporting CP ... for the right price. While Montero's permanent transfer was tied to a supposed buyout clause of more than $80 million, it appears as though Sporting CP is now "only" looking for transfer fee of about $11 million. While that's a lot less than the original buyout clause, it still represents a hefty profit on the transfer fee they supposedly paid the Sounders (which was only expected to be about $3 million if all the escalators were hit). According to the same report, Sporting CP believes Montero would have interest from Liga MX and MLS.
While there's almost certainly a market for Montero's services and it's even possible that someone is willing pay three times what Sporting CP did just about a year ago, that team is probably not in MLS and almost certainly not the Sounders.
Still just 27, Montero already has 47 MLS goals and if he can log six more seasons of 11 goals per year, he'd be league's career scoring leader. There's really no question about his ability to score here. Montero is also married to a native of the Seattle area, continues to visit during the offseason and seems to have a special place in his heart for the Sounders, who may still own his MLS rights since his transfer did not yield any allocation money.
But at $11 million, he'd also be one of the most expensive players to join the league and there's no reason to think he's that much better than when he last played here in 2012. Even beyond that, the Sounders don't really have a place to play Montero. Clint Dempsey effectively fills the exact same role as Montero did and he's not the kind of forward who would form an effective band-of-three with the current personnel.
Which is all a long way of saying, while it would be a cool story if Montero ended up back in Seattle, there's no reason to think that's going to happen anytime soon.