If you haven’t noticed, the soccer calendar is becoming increasingly crowded.
It’s impossible to go more than a year without a new proposal popping up to expand tournaments like the World Cup and the Club World Cup. Effort to squeeze value out of every possible inch of scheduling real estate isn’t unique to FIFA, of course. It’s commonplace in MLS, too. Between the introduction of a best-of-three playoff series and an expanded Leagues Cup, MLS teams are playing more games than ever (up significantly from an average of 36.3 per team in 2021 to 42.2 last season).
With more games on the calendar, the best teams in MLS are responding with increasingly deep rosters. There may not be a club with a more effectively built squad — or a more cleverly built one — than the Seattle Sounders, who are guaranteed to play at least 49 games this year, a top-10 all-time number for an MLS team.
Now about to begin their push for a third MLS Cup, here’s how the Sounders looked inward to create a squad with a level of depth most other MLS clubs could only dream of.
When it comes to the Seattle Sounders’ roster, Adrian Hanauer is a straight-shooter. The team’s 59-year-old owner doesn’t try to hide the fact that the Sounders don’t spend on their first team like Inter Miami or a handful of MLS’s other high-rollers.
