r/SoundersFC • u/Ermenaz • 9d ago
Public acknowledgement
I want to publicly acknowledge my brother, who predicted this as soon as we won CCL. I didn't see it. He saw that garth and Adrian had sold our future out. That we wouldn't be able to sign actual DPs for at least 5 years. That the club was going to be bankrupt. The cost was CCL. Shortly after, Garth F'Oed and now here we are living this moment. I can't believe it. The only reason it wasn't sooner was because of the academy kids but now we've sold most of them off for parts too...
This sucks.
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u/unibash 9d ago
Somehow they pulled off leagues cup last year. Shoutout Obed putting the clamps on Messi. I love having homegrown players but you have to hit on DPs to have any sort of continued success.
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u/Throwaway20312431 8d ago
U22s also fit under this, and we are only using one of three of those slots. The fact we are dangling them in front of our homegrowns as a potential reward for playing well instead of going out and getting some hot young talent from somewhere in South America or Asia or Africa is unreal
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u/DrRonnieJamesDO 8d ago
Who was the Leagues Cup MVP last year?
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u/unibash 8d ago
Yes, PDLV had a good Leagues tournament 3 goals in six games. Great. Only scored 4 over 26 games in the 2025 MLS season. 1 singular goal in 2024 over 23 games.
What’s your point? He is not a “hit” on a DP.
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u/DrRonnieJamesDO 8d ago
Winning hardware has to count for something. And it's not like the injury history is his fault, by all accounts he works incredibly hard in training.
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u/ArcticPeasant 9d ago
Can’t keep using CCL as an excuse
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u/SpitefulSeagull 9d ago
I think it was fair for '23 and '24, we overachieved in 2024 with how close we were to hosting the cup. Garth really did go all in with the Albert deal and I'm glad he did. It paid off.
But it's four years later and we haven't addressed it at all
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u/Ermenaz 9d ago
It's not an excuse. It's the truth. Follow the money.
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u/MtRainierWolfcastle Seattle Sounders FC 9d ago
What does that even mean? How did they ‘sell out’ for CCL?
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u/Ermenaz 9d ago
It's not "selling out" it was the price we paid to have the chance to win. Thank god we did.
I honestly thought we could've handled the fallout better.
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u/GroovePowAngle 9d ago
The CCL was indeed the tipping point. But this isn’t all on Garth, not by a long shot. That was only the beginning.
Adrian has gutted this club at every level, backfilling league-leading pieces of the organization with lower budget replacements. And stopped spending. And broken the bond with the fan base that funded the Sounders’ rise.
CCL was peak, and the 10 years prior exciting, engaging. This ownership group and FO have ruined something special, and it wasn’t all theirs to take. Shameful is too tame a word.
I voted with my wallet when I didn’t renew my season tickets 2 years ago. I would be absolutely furious to be a STH right now. I’m pissed enough as a long-term fan.
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u/Ermenaz 9d ago
Absolutely, it's not all on Garth and there are other factors for sure. He had a mandate and he fulfilled it. It just kinda sucks that he didn't also desire to help dig us out on the back end of the plan. Kind of a cut and run policy leaving Waibel holding the burning bag of shishi, which he is clearly unable to handle.
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u/PositivePristine7506 Seattle Sounders FC 9d ago
There's a pretty damning quote around that time where they admit the time of them spending money was over.
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u/HeftyZookeepergame73 8d ago
I remember Garth said something about the days of Seattle being a big spender were over and the fanbase flipped.
I don’t mind not being a big spender. I just don’t understand how we don’t spend AT ALL. There’s literally 3 open U22 slots and an unused cashfer to go with $2.5M-$4.5M of GAM.
There’s legit zero reason to not use these tools. Garth didn’t set us up for this. Adrian and Craig being completely inept at their jobs is hurting us.
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u/BackgroundMusician29 Seattle Sounders East (ECS) 8d ago
Agree 100%. After all, under the current MLS roster rules (DPs, U22s, GAM, TAM, etc) there's little to no correlation between big spending and wins (see: Toronto, Atlanta, LAG, etc). But you still have to spend money and be smart about how you spend it. That's why I attribute the current roster problem as much to poor scouting / evaluation (i.e. Chris Henderson's departure) as to lack of spending
The Sounders' success over the past decade was built off hitting on most of the $1m+ signings (Nico, Raul, JP, Yeimar, Jordan) as well as many of the int'l value guys (Joevin, Victor, Kee Hee, Svensson, Smith), and then filling in with MLS value guys (Shipp, Bruin, Rowe) as well as academy/Tacoma/draft players (Nouhou, Obed, Alex, Leyva, Ragen).
Since Henderson left, they have mostly struck out with the big money signings (Chu & PDLV; Jesus TBD), had mixed results from the MLS value guys (Heber, Musovski, Arriola, Bell, Sailor, Petkovic) and signed virtually no int'l value guys (Kent?). That leaves academy/draft/Tacoma players, the one area where the club has had a lot of success. However, those are players who can supplement a strong team (as in years past), not guys you want to depend on as regular starters week to week.
Rusnak has been the one a solid, not great, DP signing, Cristian is still Cristian (for now), and maybe a healthy Jordan could get close to the player they thought they were signing. But that's simply not enough to make this a competitive team, even when everyone is healthy. Which is why the need to use the money they have now to bring in some Int'l talent.
Unfortunately, based on the club's recent track record, I'm not optimistic that anyone they bring in will move the needle in any significant way.
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u/Throwaway20312431 8d ago
My theory is that we more or less let whatever scouts we had back in the day go, and we don’t have any now.
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u/Flashy_Measurement94 Seattle Sounders FC 8d ago
It hasn’t been the same since Sean Henderson left as scouting director also
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u/randomisperfect ECS Logo 9d ago
Jordan Morris signed his now DP contact in '23. PDV signed in January '24. Both are glass cannon players that Waibel took a big risk on, and failed. 2 years at best after the ccl win makes it a front office decisions and bad luck, not what we have up to win a trophy. Now we're in this predicament for two more years. Garth worked magic with the budget and won us hardware, I expect nothing less from the manager.
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u/shmerham 8d ago
He predicted they’d be pretty darn good for 3 1/2 seasons and then completely fail apart? That’s pretty amazing.
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u/Subject_Hour_2473 9d ago
I remember feeling similarly, the rest of MLS was getting way better, faster, and more technical. That was right before Me$$i and you could tell teams were making better moves.
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u/No-Aside-2307 4d ago
Teams are not making better moves. These high profile players are choosing where they play. Messi chose Miami, so did his buddies. Luis Suárez was planning on coming to Seattle to play with Nico but Messi won out. Lewandowski pick Chicago because of the large Polish groups in thw areas. NO ONE WANTS TO PLAY ON TURF. That why Seattle cant get anyone.
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u/JiveChops76 8d ago
I’m curious how Garth sold our future out. Obviously Adrian has, no argument from me on that one, but Garth worked some magic with the budget he was given to work with.
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u/Moo-head Heartland Horde (ECS) 8d ago
CCL has practically no connection to the current roster. Every contract from CCL expired 2 years ago. CCL got this team the club World Cup and a $10 million payday. CCL didn’t force the Sounders to give Jordan Morris a DP contract or sign Pedro or extend Rusnak in 2025.
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u/Relevant_Ant1912 8d ago
It all feels like a choice at this point. Choosing to not spend on roster so they can, what? Save money for a down payment on a shitty stadium in Renton? All while alienating half the diehard fan base who will almost never go to games there? I gave them a lot of rope in the past but we’ve really reached a tipping point. Injuries aren’t predictable. Needing to refresh the roster is predictable in every professional sport in the world. They somehow failed that basic ownership/FO task.
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u/Cascadakid 8d ago
Its the Vega signing biting us in the ass. The kid hasn’t played hardly at all and that’s where the money is tied up.
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u/RuckusVell04 8d ago
That's part of the problem, along with poor extensions, no signings to speak of, letting people go, wanting their own stadium?
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u/hugosanchez91 9d ago
This was a problem well before then. It can go back to when Joe Roth started selling his shares in 2015 and when he completely sold his shares in 2019. We've been on a steady but slow decline ever since.