Soccer beacon Seattle shines on the World Cup stage

SEATTLE — June beauty is not promised here. You can pray for good weather, but it’s best to rise from your knees and make an actual plan.

At this time of year, Seattle is usually like negotiating with the most mercurial person you could ever meet. It still plays bouncer with the sun. Pewter still cloaks the sky often, and the drizzle remains noncommittal. You question your clothing decisions daily. The locals like to joke (or forewarn): Summer doesn’t start until July 5, the morning after a sometimes soggy celebration of our independence. June is a final penance. July is the start of a three-month paradise.

But it’s different right now. It is warm and improbably clear, 75 and sunny, the mountains standing in the background like neighbors watching from their front porch. These are the days that transform Seattleites from uptight to giddy. For its World Cup close-up, the city looks its best.

It was prepared to shine even if the weather hadn’t cooperated.

On Friday afternoon, as the United States continued its good vibes with a 2-0 victory over Australia at a rollicking Seattle Stadium, a three-decade dream became as real and glorious as it could get in the Pacific Northwest. The city made its debut as a World Cup host on Monday, but as nice as the town looked with Belgium and Egypt creating a sea of red, the event vaulted to another level with the USMNT visiting and clinching a spot in the Round of 32.

The waterfront area that includes Pier 62, the picturesque watch-party site with a floating pitch spanning across a barge, was packed before the sun rose. Pioneer Square, a short walk to the stadium, looked like a festival. It was an overloaded day: Juneteenth, the Mariners playing the Boston Red Sox at night next door, three cruise ships docked, and an estimated 10,000 Australians visiting for the match. Pre-summer Seattle seldom does this much at once, but it was all so appropriate.

“I sobbed on TV when we were announced as a city to host,” said Adrian Hanauer, the majority owner of the Sounders FC and one of the leading figures in Seattle’s transformation into both a model MLS franchise and an American soccer province with global credibility. “Maybe that was when I actually realized it was happening. We arrived as one of the top markets in soccer in North America.”

At the start of this century, the Sounders were rummaging through the minor leagues of the sport, and Hanauer ran the franchise out of a modest office suite within his family’s bedding company. When he took control in 2002, the franchise was losing about $1 million per season. Five years later, he was part of an investment group that paid a $30 million expansion fee in 2007 to join Major League Soccer. In 2009, the Sounders FC played their first season and immediately became one of the most successful start-ups in modern American professional sports.

But Seattle’s dream of becoming a soccer city started even before then. Lumen Field, stripped of its corporate name for this tournament, opened in 2002 after a lengthy process to fund a new building for the Seattle Seahawks. However, the pitch to receive statewide approval on a referendum for financing needed to be more clever than asking for an NFL palace. Fred Mendoza, the board chairman of the Washington State Public Stadium Authority, played dealmaker and branded the project as a football/soccer stadium that could one day host the World Cup. Twenty-nine years ago, he went around the state building support, tapping into Seattle’s deep passion for soccer. His vision helped late Seahawks owner Paul Allen create the venue that sparkled on the international stage Friday.

“Fred was the Willy Wonka of getting the World Cup to Seattle,” said Pete Fewing, the former Seattle University coach and fixture in the local soccer scene. “Everything that has activated Seattle as a soccer city was very organic first, and then it was incredibly well-executed. It was a sponge that needed to add water.”

When sports leagues expand, some markets are anointed. Others force their way into the conversation through the passion of the fan base. This city didn’t wake up one day as a soccer town. It grew into one while hiding in plain sight, tucked away in a region often considered too remote to be top of mind.

In terms of national interest, the floor has risen for men’s soccer in this country. And Seattle serves as an avatar. The most significant progress can be measured by more than national team trophies (or our historically feckless pursuit of them). As Seattle proves, America is steadily growing its base through supporter cultures, immigrant communities, and soccer-loving coves on the map that probably existed when the U.S. first played host in 1994 but weren’t visible enough to stand out.

Kasey Keller was born in Olympia, 60 miles south of Seattle. The retired goalkeeper was named to four World Cup teams. In 2009, he returned home for the Sounders’ inaugural season and played there for three years before retiring in 2011.

“Growing up here, being part of this community, where soccer was more in the forefront, I think, than most places in America — 50, 60 years ago,” Keller said. “We’ve just seen that growth with the Sounders.”

When they joined the MLS, the Sounders didn’t build a culture from scratch. They built it on top of something that had already been established, carefully, by a community that believed in it before belief was rational.

“My adult life has been dedicated to this,” Hanauer said.

Those words landed differently this week. His unglamorous origin story has become something more impactful than he could’ve imagined. For an afternoon, the U.S. drafted off Seattle’s soccer culture and further legitimized hope that it could make a memorable tournament run.

“I’d be lying if I had some interesting answer that made me seem prophetic,” he said.

A stadium built with World Cups in mind has fulfilled its promise. On Monday, Fewing spotted Mendoza in the crowd and waved. The longtime friends didn’t need to linger in the moment. The acknowledgement was enough. Willy Wonka did good.

 

“I think the city needed this as a tonic,” Fewing said.

American soccer needed it, too.

For as well as things have gone, the curiosity isn’t quite whether this USMNT is ready to win the tournament. It’s a measure of how much progress this sport has made over the last 32 years. Seattle provides an answer before you can finish the question. You can feel the growth in the passion, here and in the way it has spread throughout the country in only two matches.

But this isn’t the peak. Not in America. And certainly not in Seattle, which will continue to dream.

“It’s probably the wrong answer,” Hanauer said when asked about his emotions, “but it’s one of those things I won’t appreciate fully until it’s come and gone.”

He paused and searched for the right words.

“And then it will be, how do we get the World Cup again?”

Without any promises, Seattle executed a smart plan. It shined long before the sun.