Weightiest of these is the Club World Cup, a global competition from June 14 – July 13 for soccer clubs that’s analogous to what the World Cup is for national teams. It’s the second time the Sounders have taken part, the first being in 2023 when they became the first MLS team to earn a berth. The tournament has since undergone an organizational shift from annual to quadrennial and from eight teams to 32. To simplify matters in this inaugural expanded year, organizers decided the slate of 32 teams for 2025 would consist of recent participants, including the Sounders.
At their 2023 appearance, in Morocco, they made a respectable showing, holding their own against Egyptian club Al-Ahly for 88 minutes, losing 1-0. (The only other MLS team in the competition this year is Lionel Messi-led Inter Miami, which earned its place by winning the 2024 MLS Supporters’ Shield, awarded to the team with the best overall record.)
The format is the same as the World Cup’s: For the first round the teams are sorted randomly into groups of four who all play each other round-robin, and the two teams from each group with the best record advance into a knockout bracket. The Sounders’ group includes Botafogo (from Rio de Janeiro), Atlético Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain (June 15, 19 and 23).
Needless to say this is some of the stiffest competition in the world, but the Sounders will have home field advantage, because the U.S. is hosting the CWC and all three of the team’s group-stage matches will be at Lumen Field. The CWC final is scheduled for July 13; should the Sounders make it past the group stage, CWC play will continue concurrently, and gruelingly, with the regular MLS season matches.
The path to the CWC
Let’s back up — how did the Sounders qualify for a tournament this prestigious in the first place? By winning, in May 2022, the annual competition among qualifying CONCACAF teams, known as the CONCACAF Champions Cup. The soccer globe is divided into six confederations, roughly corresponding to the continents, and CONCACAF is the acronym for this region’s governing body (The Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football). Each year the top CONCACAF clubs (27 teams this year, as determined through the 2024 MLS standings and various other criteria) compete. The Sounders’ 2022 CONCACAF win sent them to the CWC in 2023, and that prior qualification got them on the list for the expanded CWC tournament this year.
The Sounders are competing in the CONCACAF Champions Cup again this season, and in fact it’s already begun.
They traveled to Guatemala on Wednesday, Feb. 19 to face Antigua GFC, coming out on top 3-1, leaving them in a strong position to advance. In all rounds except the one-game June 1 final, teams meet twice, home and away, and the higher aggregate score advances, so when Antigua plays here next Wednesday, to stay in the tournament they will have to beat the Sounders by three goals.
Two of Wednesday’s three goals were scored by players who fans are especially curious to see prove themselves: new acquisition (from Dallas FC) Paul Arriola and, returning for his second season, Pedro de la Vega. The heralded Argentinian, 24, suffered upon his arrival not only from nagging injuries but from unmet (and, to be fair, basically unmeetable) high expectations. But Wednesday’s golazo (n., a spectacular or impressive goal) plus his excellent preseason performance surely did much to ease skeptics’ apprehension.
Left: Starting his 12th season with the Sounders, keeper Stefan Frei, who’s led the team to two MLS Cup titles and, soon, to a second Club World Cup appearance.
Right: Andrew Thomas, whose impressive Open Cup performance as both keeper and penalty-kick taker was a high point of the team’s 2024 season. (Courtesy of Sounders FC Communications)
But wait, there’s more
The third “extra” tournament this year for the Sounders is the Leagues Cup. Launched in 2019, it’s a contest among top teams in MLS and the Mexican top division, Liga MX, running July 29 - August 31. There has been grumbling among the fan base about this; the cynical call it a cash grab, since in practice teams end up re-playing practically all the same teams they already meet in the MLS regular season and in CONCACAF. The MLS season pauses during the opening round, but here too, if teams advance, they face a very clogged schedule as MLS play resumes.
Missing out
There’s also fan resentment that the Leagues Cup is this year keeping the Sounders from participating in a fifth competition, the Open Cup, which dates back to 1913 — in the timeline of American soccer, that’s practically Jurassic. The OC’s long history is just one of the many sentimental reasons it’s special to Sounders fans, uppermost of which is that it feels like their tournament (the Sounders won in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2014) in their house.
Early-stage matches had traditionally been played on the team’s former training grounds, Starfire in Tukwila, in a 4,000-seat stadium where the intimacy ups the intensity like you can’t imagine unless you’ve experienced it. (Listen here about the “Red Card Wedding,” a legendary, tell-your-grandkids battle in 2015 against the archrival Portland Timbers that came this close to chaos.)
The Open Cup is open to teams at all levels of pro and semi-pro soccer; the Sounders had participated even before they were in MLS. It’s also often an opportunity for younger players to show they deserve a spot in, or at least consideration for, the starting 11. Best of all, fans at Starfire matches were afterward able to line up against the fence between the pitch and the locker rooms and get autographs signed.
(If you want an old-school Open Cup experience, Ballard FC, a USL League Two team coached by former Sounder James Riley, qualified this year; their campaign opens March 19 at Interbay Stadium.)
They like to kick, and stretch, and kick: The Sounders in Spain on Jan. 22, preparing for their most complicated season schedule yet. (Courtesy of Sounders FC Communications)
2025: The story so far
The win in Guatemala follows a gratifying preseason in which the team traveled to Marbella, Spain (must be nice), for six exhibition matches against squads from Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, and Kentucky, ending with two draws and four wins. Jeremiah Oshan of the indispensable fan blog Sounder at Heart helpfully summarizes: “The Sounders played about 585 minutes and outscored their opponents 19-7. Considering their big emphasis was being more dangerous offensively, that has to be seen as a positive sign.”
Low goal production was the core of the frustration among fans in 2024 — an emotionally careening year that saw the Sounders win just four of their first 17 MLS matches but 12 of their second 17, and ending with cause for optimism, placing fourth in the Western Conference and battling their way through the playoffs to the WC final.
Coach Brian Schmetzer and his staff are focusing on enhancing the offense to match the perennial strength of the defense — which fans were impatient for the team to do, especially after the end of star forward Raul Ruidiaz’s seven years here. They’ve kept roster churn to a strategic minimum while bringing in, most notably, two MLS veterans: Arriola and, also from Dallas, Jesús Ferreira. Pedro de la Vega also boosted morale by scoring four of those 19 preseason goals.
And one serious priority is (or should be) getting back the Cascadia Cup, a traveling trophy that goes to whichever of the MLS squads in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle, Portland or Vancouver) ends the season with the best record among ourselves. Good for bragging rights in the league’s most contentious rivalry, it’s a title that’s become even more infuriating to lose than it is fun to win.
