Shortly before eleven o’clock on Wednesday night, a handful of fans were still in the stands of Lumen Stadium, in downtown Seattle, waving flags and chanting the Sounders’ victory. Almost two hours had passed since the team had defeated the Pumas of Mexico in the Concacaf Champions League (LCC). It was the first victory in 22 years for an American team in the Confederation tournament of North and Central America and the Caribbean, dominated for 16 years by Mexican teams. The television stations had lifted the sets and workers were sweeping up the confetti from the synthetic grass. But there was a feeling in the air that the team had reached a new level, a global market. «It had to be there. It was something historic,» said Brian Kelly, a 36-year-old primary school teacher who saw the Sounders lift their first international trophy, on Wednesday night. The team has been in Major League Soccer (MLS, the American league) for 13 years, but its history goes back almost half a century. The Seattle team was one of the 24 squads that was part of the first commercial soccer experiment in the country, the North American Soccer League. Since then, the fans showed a particular pride. Historian Frank McDonald recalls in the book The United States of Soccer, by Phil West, that Washington State fans welcomed Pelé and his New York Cosmos in 1975 with a banner that said: “Pelé, we would be here even if you hadn’t come.” A year later, 58,000 people went to see a match between the Brazilian star’s team and the locals. It was one of the most important entries for a despised sport. That contempt is a thing of the past today. Seattle, along with cities such as Columbus (Ohio), Los Angeles (California), Dallas (Texas) and Philadelphia, are bastions of soccer. The night of the LCC final, the system that measures seismic movements in the northwest of the United States recorded three small earthquakes in 90 minutes. These coincided with each of the goals conceded by Pumas. The Concacaf title was the main objective from the start of the campaign for Garth Lagerwey, the general manager of the Sounders. The local sports press considered the trophy the Moby Dick of the executive, who came close to winning it in 2011 when he was in charge of Real Salt Lake, from Utah. Monterrey from Mexico won that time. Lagerwey arrived in the northwest in 2015 and began to create the team that has achieved this milestone, which will allow them to play in the next FIFA Club World Cup. «It won’t be a game just for fun against reserves, we’re going to play for a trophy. This is why we do what we do, right? It’s incredible,» he told The Athletic. The Sounders share a house with their older brothers, the Seahawks of the American Football League, the most popular team in the city. They are followed by the Mariners of baseball, the only one in the professional league that has never played in a World Series. Both sports have more roots than soccer, but the sporting royalty of these teams gave the locals a boost to win the international title. Marshawn Lynch, a running back who helped Seattle win the Superbowl in 2014, recorded a video calling on the city to pack the stadium. The Lumen recorded an attendance of 68,400 people, the best attendance for an LCC game. Ken Griffey Jr., an iconic Mariners player from the 1990s, also recorded a message to warm things up. “They say it’s just a game, but this is much more… This means everything,” he stated in a text full of local epic and loaded with nods to home triumphs. In other regions, football is becoming independent from other sports. At the end of April, the Miami City Council finally gave in to the charms of the MLS. After several years of delays and a six-hour debate, councilors finally approved plans to build a project near the airport that will house Inter Miami’s new home. The stadium will have capacity for 25,000 people and will include a 23-hectare park with soccer fields, as well as a 750-room hotel and office buildings. Inter have finally arrived at the promised land. The franchise debuted in the league three years ago with the help of David Beckham and brothers Jorge and José Mas, businessmen in the construction sector, of Cuban-American origin. They assure that the building will be ready for the start of the MLS in 2025. If the deadline is met, a promise that Beckham demanded from the Mas to enter the company will finally come true. The team had to play in Miami, due to the market opportunities that the Florida city encompasses. Until now, Inter plays in Fort Lauderdale, almost 50 kilometers from the city. The MLS sustains its growth. Last year, the league had 27 teams. This reached 28 with the incorporation of Charlotte FC in North Carolina. Number 29 will arrive next year with Saint Louis City, which will play on a field located in a black neighborhood that has 200 years of history. MLS executives are still studying which city will receive the 30th team, whose debut will likely come in 2024. This one will almost certainly reinforce the west. Commissioner Don Garber stated late last year that Las Vegas is ahead in the race, but there are also negotiations with groups in Phoenix (Arizona) and San Diego (California).Supporters of the Los Angeles Galaxy team during a league match against Los Angeles FC, on April 9, 2022, in Carson, California.Shaun Clark (Getty Images) A league with 30 teams reveals the potential soccer market in the United States. The MLS was born in 1996 with only 10 squads and has taken three decades to catch up with the MLB and the NBA, which have the same number of franchises. The NFL and the hockey league, the NHL, have 32. Next year will be important because the Leagues Cup will be played, an experiment to exploit the animosity between soccer in the United States and Mexico. All professional teams from both countries will compete for the trophy during the summer. These nations, along with Canada, will host the 2026 World Cup. The MLS seeks to climb another step in its growth, that of its presence on television. The passion of the league is experienced mainly in the stadiums. The Charlotte team, one of the weakest this season, debuted in March playing at home against the Los Angeles Galaxy. He did it in front of 74,500 people, the best entrance in the league. On television, however, he is still fighting for a star spot. The matches broadcast nationally had an average rating of 285,000 viewers in 2021, an increase of 11% compared to 2019. Executives expect to reach an average of 300,000 this year, still below the audiences recorded by other regional leagues, such as the Mexican one. In the domestic market, soccer is the fourth most watched sport after American football, basketball and baseball. The women’s league, the NWSL for its acronym in English, has a great advantage over the MLS. Last year’s final achieved an audience of more than half a million viewers. At the beginning of April, a match between San Diego and Angel City, from Los Angeles, had an audience of 450,000 spectators. The championship achieved by Washington against Chicago was followed by half a million viewers. “We want a World Cup game,” Rubén Osorio, 55, said on Wednesday outside the Lumen stadium, and dressed in the Mexican national team shirt and a Sounders scarf. “Look at these fans, we are ready to show the world that we want important games,” he said. In 1994, Seattle was overlooked by FIFA. In 2026 the omission would be unforgivable. You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes on Facebook and Twitteror sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
