They know the drill in Seattle by now. Around 5pm on Sunday evening (1am Monday GMT) the bars around Pioneer Square will begin to empty, glasses flung down before punters convene inside Occidental Park. By the time they set off they will number a couple of thousand, possibly more. It is not a long journey, half a mile maybe, but the march is sufficient to set the heart racing and by the time they enter their section in the south stand of CenturyLink Field, members of Seattle Sounders’ Emerald City Supporters group (ECS) will be warmed for a non-negotiable 90 minutes’ vocal support . Before that, they will almost certainly unfurl one of the flag-based “Tifo” displays for which they have achieved international renown. Upwards of 55,000 others will share the spectacle and after all that, if recent form is much to go by, the Sounders will win.
There is something metronomic about all this, but a little more edge comes into play now. Win sufficiently against LA Galaxy in the Major League Soccer Western Championship, second leg – they are 1-0 down from the first – and a Sounders team spearheaded by Obafemi Martins and Clint Dempsey will reach their first MLS Cup final. It is the biggest domestic prize and Seattle, mathematically the best team in either MLS Conference this season, will be heartened they defeated their opponents 2-0 on home turf five weeks ago.
LA Galaxy are old hands – four MLS Cups tell that story – and as well-worn a name as the league has had. The Sounders, created in 2008 and remodelling a famous name from the past, are 13 years younger and that deficit has matched their image: fresh, exciting, liberal but, on the pitch, short of maturity.
“If you had told me in late 2007, when we first acquired the MLS team, that we would be where we are today I would not have believed you,” Adrian Hanauer, the Sounders’ general manager and minority owner, tells the Observer. “To think that we’d have around 36,000 season ticket holders and average 44,000 fans a game, and that we would become such a ubiquitous part of the culture and community – we’ve exceeded our expectations.”
The Sounders are succeeding where so many fail. Attendances were expected to dip below the 32,253 who watched the reincarnation’s first MLS game, against New York Red Bulls, in March 2009, once the novelty had waned. A levelling-out to around 12,000 was allowed for.
The extent to which they first held up and then swelled – their average attendance is 27th in the world this year – may have caused surprise in the boardroom but the perfect mechanism to harness the interest already existed.
An official members’ association, the Seattle Sounders FC Alliance, was allowed in 2012 to vote for the club’s general manager. It can do so again in 2016. This democratic approach extends to numerous issues within the club, and season ticket holders join the Alliance for free. There is no equivalent in MLS; Barcelona and Real Madrid are obvious inspirations.
“By creating this democracy, we tap into a unique psyche within our north-west demographic and fanbase,” says Hanauer. “We do have a very progressive, well-educated, counter-cultural city and the interaction we’ve put into place identifies with that. People get it, they appreciate it and it makes them that bit more engaged.”
It is a happy camp and there is a sense that the Sounders have struck upon something residual in a multicultural city whose first attempt at a professional club rode the short-lived NASL wave adeptly enough during the 1970s. The base feels solid and the club has bigger designs.
“We are striving to be among the top clubs in the world, but that will take time,” says Hanauer. “A modest first step would be to win the Concacaf Champions League and qualify for the Fifa Club World Cup. That would allow us to argue that we’re one of the top clubs in the Americas, and, to some degree, globally.
“Off the pitch, we feel as if we are as strong as many of the world’s best and we want to be known as the club with the most passionate fanbase, the best matchday experience and the best value.”
Now things must come together on the field and there is a feeling among the fans that, after a degree of frustration with the long-serving coach Sigi Schmid in recent years, the Sounders are amassing a side worthy of their dynamic image.
“There have been some magical moments watching Dempsey and Martins together this season,” says Aaron Reed, co-president of ECS. “Perhaps, for the first time, Sigi has everything he wants – people playing creatively up top, a solid midfield. It’s the closest to a pure team that he’s put together.”
That team will be tested in January if DeAndre Yedlin, the right-back, makes his agreed move to Tottenham Hotspur. In the shorter term, they have had to contend with storms that rinsed any post-Thanksgiving sluggishness and cut short Friday’s training. Schmid wondered whether LA Galaxy would enjoy the non-Californian conditions, but real home advantage will lie in the atmosphere created inside CenturyLink Field.
Although Reed and ECS keep quiet, it is a fair bet this will include a painstakingly arranged Tifo. As Hanauer, who is “paranoid” about maintaining the club’s momentum, watches he may be reflect on the progress since his first involvement with a Sounders team. In 2002, he took over the first remake of the NASL side as it played out time in the United Soccer Leagues to small crowds. “When I was a small boy I went to all the Sounders’ games in the NASL and there was the same kind of vibe in the community. Then it went away for 25 years and I wasn’t sure that we would ever get it back. Seeing what we have now feels a bit like deja vu.”
Major League Soccer is divided into two conferences, Eastern and Western, and the top five teams at the end of the 34-game regular season in each qualify for the playoffs. The fourth and fifth-placed teams play each other in a one-off game. The winners progress to the conference semi-finals.These are two-legged matches, as is each conference final. In the Western final, LA Galaxy lead 1-0 Seattle Sounders after the first leg; in the Eastern, New England Revolution hold a 2-1 margin over New York Red Bulls. Away goals count after 90 minutes of the second leg but not in extra time, and if the teams are still level after 120 minutes, there is a penalty shootout. The winners of the conference finals then play each other on 7 December at a venue still to be decided, to be crowned MLS champions.
