All those months ago, when the MLS season was in its infancy, Sounders general manager Garth Lagerwey characterized the 2017 season as a referendum for the Sounders.
Would Seattle’s MLS Cup the previous year be regarded, in his words, as “kind of fluky and lucky”? Or would the Sounders show that they were a team that could sustain success “and take it to the next level”, he pondered. The next 10 months would tell the story.
On Thursday, with the din of a boisterous, buoyant, near-sellout crowd at CenturyLink Field providing a chorus of approval, the Sounders provided on exclamation point on a season that has knocked any notion of flukiness out of the equation.