March to the 50th campaign promises to be “uncomfortable” but has potential to be something special.
When MLS first awarded an expansion team to Seattle, it was with the hope of building on the soccer culture of the region. It was not, however, meant to be a direct continuation of the legacy established by previous teams.
The Seattle Sounders had been a popular and reasonably successful team in the NASL and there was a more successful but less popular team in the USL playing under that name. In fact, Adrian Hanauer — a minority investor in the MLS team, who would eventually be named its general manager — had owned and operated the USL team since 2002.