Category Archives: Know Your History

International Friendlies, Know Your History, MLS Sounders

A Friendly Formula

Rolling through the years, there have been scores of international friendlies played round these parts, with a wide variety of match-ups and benefits.

They have benefitted widows and expectant mothers, state associations and school team formation. Over the generations we’ve hosted Cold War foes and Sister Cities, Olympic champions and Champions League victors.

imgresThis, the 10th friendly of the Sounders FC era, is billed as preparation for the upcoming return of Seattle to Champions League play. More than four months before the fact and with group stage opponents yet to be determined.

Continue reading A Friendly Formula →

Know Your History, MLS Sounders, NASL Sounders, Sounders 2

Reserves Packaging Much Improved, But Barometer Remains Same

No, this ain’t your dad’s Sounders Reserves. But ultimately its success will be determined the same way.

For those of us who shivered in ones and twos at Renton Stadium back in the day, the notion of Sounders 2 opening before a big crowd is only one of the reasons our minds are blown.

To think that S2 and its fellow MLS reserves are part of respectable national league, complete with playoffs, and attracting more fan interest than the soccer equivalent of geeky baseball scouts with radar guns and stopwatches, is yet another sign of the thriving times in American futbol.

Reserve programs playing in the USL (formerly USL PRO) have now outstripped their parent clubs for the number of incarnations that have come and gone over 39 years. Their purpose has shifted from time to time. However when attached to a top-tier club, the focus has always been about producing talent, and that has not changed.

McAlistermagcover
Kennedy High grad Jimmy McAlister was the first of more than 20 young prospects to reach NASL action through the Sounders Reserves

Continue reading Reserves Packaging Much Improved, But Barometer Remains Same →

Know Your History, NASL Sounders

Remembering Quakes Were 1st Rival

3 Comments

Before the Galaxy, before Portland and even before Vancouver, the Sounders found their first rival in San Jose.

The Quakes, who come to the CLink for the 57th meeting with Seattle on Saturday, were the first foe that the Sounders and the fans learned to hate. Of course, breaking a favorite’s leg will do that.

Our wayback machine takes us to Memorial Stadium on the evening of May 19, 1974. Knotted at 1-1 in the 78th minute, Seattle winger Pepe Fernandez latches onto a loose ball at midfield and drives toward the west goal.

1974PepeFernandezLA
Pepe Fernandez, Seattle’s original #9, was a former league MVP and fan favorite.

Fernandez, a former NASL MVP, has won over fans in the first three games of the Sounders’ existence with his close control and ability to make plays. His corner kick to John Rowlands had opened the scoring.

Continue reading Remembering Quakes Were 1st Rival →

Know Your History, MLS Sounders, NASL Sounders, Seattle Reign, USL Sounders

Best & Worst of Seattle Openers

Now that the all-clear has been sounded for Sunday’s Sounders opener against New England, it’s time to look back on some of the best and worst first games for Seattle clubs. Ready, let’s roll.

Best Theatre

March 19, 2009 – Sounders FC 3:0 New York

Seattle_Sounders_FC_First_Game_ECS_OverheadFrom the unfurling of that first tifo to Montero’s bomb (see below)–all before a national audience–it was more than anyone could’ve imagined, pulling Seattle’s soccer community together again.

Best Home Team Performance

March 28, 1981 – Sounders 3: Los Angeles 0

It was nearly a 7-month wait to get payback after a dreamy 25-7 season ended in premature playoff elimination in a shootout loss to LA. Sounders made short work of Aztecs, scoring three times in first half-hour.

Worst Home Team Performance Continue reading Best & Worst of Seattle Openers →

Know Your History, NASL Sounders

No Regrets: Principals Look Back at ’79 Strike

Nobody wins in a strike. It’s just a matter of who loses the most.

The NASL strike of 1979 was hit-and-miss, but Sounders players and management both meant business. Although the stoppage lasted only five days and Seattle’s weakened team was beaten, that was only the beginning.

In several ways those trying times marked, once and for all, an end of the club’s innocence, and with it perhaps the fans’ undying affection. What began as Camelot in 1974, was exposed as being, like anything else, a business. Warts and all.

Two of the key local figures in that labor battle were Adrian Webster, the interim players’ representative, and Sounders GM Jack Daley. Now some 35 years on, with Major League Soccer now facing a potential work stoppage while wrangling over a new CBA, Webster, Daley and others show no apparent regret for their measures.

WEbsterFamily75
Adrian Webster, right, served as interim Sounders union player representative in 1979.

Continue reading No Regrets: Principals Look Back at ’79 Strike →

Know Your History, MLS Sounders, NASL Sounders

Brief But Bitter: Sounders Strike of ’79

It lasted just four days and only one round of matches. Still, America’s first work stoppage for professional soccer left a mark as plain as studs being raked down an opponent’s shin.

And while many markets witnessed little disruption to business as usual, Seattle was not spared. All but a handful of players walked out and the replacements’ display was televised for all to see.

Here’s a chronological look back at how the North American Soccer League strike of 1979 played out for the Sounders.

Churskyback
Tony Chursky was the first casualty of the labor unrest. Seattle traded their player representative to California before the strike. (Frank MacDonald Collection)

Owners of the 24 teams had set on a collision course with the players for nearly two years. In 1977, 93 percent of the players voted to authorize formation of a union. By August of 1978, 75 percent voted to be represented by the NASL Players Association.

The National Labor Relations Board promptly certifies the union, and just as promptly NASL owners refuse to recognize the union.

Continue reading Brief But Bitter: Sounders Strike of ’79 →

Indoor Soccer, Know Your History, Seattle Sea Dogs

What Might Have Been: SeaDogs Finish Strong

For those inclined to seek lost treasures, a mission awaits: Where exactly resides the championship trophy for the Seattle SeaDogs?

Is it stowed in the garage of some player or coach? Maybe in the corner of a former owner’s basement billiard room? Or was it somehow designated for the dumpster or worse, a fateful trip to Oklahoma City?

The SeaDogs were one of the shortest-lived professional soccer clubs in Cascadia, yet they will forever hold the distinction of defending Continental Indoor Soccer League champions. In short, they had their struggles but finished on a high note.

SeaDogsLogoDuring their three-year stand at Seattle Center, the SeaDogs were met mostly with ambivalence by the soccer community, if not the general public. They announced themselves 19 months in advance of their debut and during the one window over 41 years that Puget Sound was without a functioning club. Still, they were essentially greeted with a collective shrug.

Continue reading What Might Have Been: SeaDogs Finish Strong →

Indoor Soccer, Know Your History, Tacoma Stars

When the Stars Came Out at Night

If you wanted more–more music, more lights, more goals and, yes, a little more skin–then the Tacoma Stars truly were tempting during the 80s and early 90s.

You say you like the Sounders flame throwers? They wouldn’t hold a candle to the fog, driving disco beat and laser light show when the Stars ran out. Can’t get enough Oba goal backflips? Then meet the original Flipper, Gregg Blasingame. And if a no-shirt pose on The Bachelor is your guilty pleasure, then game nights at the T-Dome provided all the reality required.

TacomaStarsThe Sounders had been all about soccer. In Tacoma it was Welcome to The Show.

Continue reading When the Stars Came Out at Night →

Indoor Soccer, Know Your History, NASL Sounders, Tacoma Stars

How Sounders Spent Their Winter Vacation

It was not as if Seattleites needed another option on their sporting menu.

Already the calendar was crammed full, year-round with Seahawks, Mariners, Sonics, Sounders, minor league hockey and all things-Huskies. Four different sports were being played in that concrete edifice on King Street known as the Kingdome. And now they would squeezing in a fifth.

Speed soccer was its name–at least locally–and back in the day when the NASL sat quiet for nearly seven months, it was a welcome winter respite, for player and fan alike.

SpeedSoccerAd1980
The Sounders initially dubbed their 6-a-side season ‘Speed Soccer,’ then ‘Winter Soccer’ in 1981-82.

While indoor, 6-a-side soccer has since become a staple with regard to participants, in the winter of 1980-81 it was a novelty, an oddity, where Seattle was concerned.

Continue reading How Sounders Spent Their Winter Vacation →

Indoor Soccer, Know Your History, NASL Sounders

Sounders first indoor venture: ‘We were clueless’

Quite frankly, they were unaware of what awaited them.

When delivered to San Francisco’s Cow Palace in the late winter of 1975, none of the Seattle Sounders seemed to know what they’d signed-up for.

“We were just a bunch of guys getting together and taking a trip down to California for a couple games,” recalls Ballan Campeau.

“We thought it was a preseason fitness thing,” David Gillett remembers. “We were clueless.”

Screen Shot 2015-01-17 at 4.39.10 PM
Seattle’s Ballan Campeau thwarts San Jose’s Paul Child.

So began Seattle’s first foray into the soccer/hockey hybrid now known as indoor or arena soccer, a game first concocted in Chicago during the Fifties. A generation later, during a pair of exhibitions at Philadelphia’s Spectrum featuring Moscow’s Red Army club, eyes were opened to commercial opportunities.

Continue reading Sounders first indoor venture: ‘We were clueless’ →