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Joshua Mayers is the Seattle Sounders FC writer for The Seattle Times. Watch for his coverage of the team, Major League Soccer and soccer around the world.
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Watching New England-Chicago, and a question
Posted by Jose Romero
In part because this Seahawks game is getting harder to watch.
Actually, Revs-Fire has been pretty good. A lot of good scoring chances and two goals; it's 1-1 at half. But then I look all the empty seats at Gillette Stadium, and all the seats masquerading as people on Halloween at Rio Tinto in that 1-0 first leg win for Real Salt Lake, and I thought of something.
We all know that Seattle is the center of MLS soccer, that no other city supports its team like this one, that Seattle has set attendance records and every game was sold out this year. And that other MLS towns like to hate on that, like this city is afforded special status because of the support for the team or something ridiculous.
So my question to you is this: Seeing how other teams come here and marvel at the atmosphere at Qwest (Chelsea and FC Barcelona players did too), how much do you think that can help Sounders FC attract target free agents or loan players or transfers from other teams or other countries? Do you think atmosphere makes that much of a difference, or do you think players prefer to go to a team that competes for titles (another plus for Seattle, I would say, even after Year One) regardless of attendance and support?
Furthermore, do you think that Sounders FC is on the world map now as far as a destination point for foreign players who might want to try MLS? Is this the place to sign with? I wrote something alluding to that recently when I spoke to Chris Henderson about his trip to a convention in Europe.
UPDATE - 3:32 AM
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