Seattle Sounders FC announced its fourth and fifth home sellouts Thursday, and the last tickets are dwindling toward a sixth.
The Major League Soccer expansion team hasn’t played in front of an empty seat for either of its first two games at Qwest Field, is assured of another sellout Saturday night when the Kansas City Wizards visit, and on Thursday sold the last of its tickets for games April 25 against the San Jose Earthquake and May 10 against the Los Angeles Galaxy. The club also announced that fewer than 1,000 tickets remain for the May 30 game against the defending MLS-champion Columbus Crew.
“It’s tremendous,” coach Sigi Schmid said as his team concluded practice Thursday. “It’s tremendous for our city, for our organization and the club; and also for the league to have this kind of franchise. I know our guys are excited again about coming back here to play.”
And it’s not just Schmid’s guys who are excited.
League officials have been talking up Seattle as a model MLS franchise. And they backed up their talk by awarding 2011 expansion teams to Northwest neighbors Portland and Vancouver, B.C.
Even visiting players are beginning to look forward to their rare chance to play in such an atmosphere on American soil – even if it means roughly 27,700 fans chanting, singing and rooting against them.
“I’ve tried to articulate to my (former teammates) what it’s going to be like,” said Taylor Graham, a Seattle defender who played the 2003 and 2004 seasons with Kansas City. “And then hearing that the game is sold out, they’re excited to play in that environment and to see it first hand.”
The Sounders crowd might seem especially large to the Wizards, who at this early stage of the season rank last among the 15 MLS teams in average home attendance.
However, the bottom two MLS teams in home attendance – Kansas City and San Jose – are both playing in small temporary homes while their permanent soccer-only homes are being planned or constructed.
San Jose is playing at a multi-purpose stadium on the campus of Santa Clara University, while the Wizards are playing at the home of the Kansas City T-Bones, an independent minor league baseball team.
Kansas City is a charter member of MLS, and the Wizards played their first 12 seasons at Arrowhead Stadium, best-known as the home of the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs.
However, Arrowhead was not as successfully downsized for the desires of the MLS as Qwest Field has been. Part of that is because of the logistics of the place: The seating area left little room for corner kicks, and the football team took its toll on the playing surface.
More significantly, even in the team’s best-attended season – 15,573 per home game in 2003 – the crowd rattled around in the huge stadium’s lower bowl.
“They never filled it in quite like Seattleites have,” said Tyson Wahl, a defender the Sounders picked up from Kansas City in the expansion draft.
“I just think the community here is so much different. There’s a much larger soccer community here that is more passionate. Kansas City has a select fan base that is really passionate; it’s just not as large as the base here.
“And it definitely plays to Seattle’s advantage, to our advantage.”
The Wizards were forced out of Arrowhead last season because of a stadium renovation. However, they have found some advantages in their temporary home – including a seating capacity small enough to provide fans with incentive to buy tickets in advance.
Club officials are hoping for the best of both worlds – an appropriate seating capacity in a soccer-specific environment – when their new stadium opens in 2011 as part of a billion-dollar mixed-use development on the former site of a shopping mall in the eastern suburbs.
There was a time when such a place seemed to be the price of admission for Seattle’s entry into MLS. But the league put aside its mandate for a soccer-specific stadium in order to partner with the Seattle Seahawks in their NFL stadium downtown. And so far, that decision has been justified more than anyone had imagined.
“When you sit (in Qwest Field) and look at it, you see the team out there, it feels like a soccer stadium,” said Adrian Hanauer, Sounders general manager and minority owner.
“That chapter (of seeking a smaller suburban stadium) is behind us. And I think that the outcome – where we’ve landed – is as good a spot as we could possibly have dreamed of. And the timing was perfect, as well. This is the right time for this sport in this city.”
Don Ruiz, 253-597-8808
blogs.thenewstribune.com/soccer
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