Seattle Sounders: What we learned in 2024 & what comes next

One more year of being one signing away.

It’s become who the Seattle Sounders are, and while there are about two dozen fanbases that’d trade places with them in a heartbeat – 57 points, semifinal appearances in both the US Open Cup and Audi MLS Cup Playoffs, quarterfinals in Leagues Cup – there is an understandable frustration in the fanbase of being… yeah, one signing away.

Here’s what I wrote in last year’s post-mortem:

Seattle played really organized and often very good soccer, which allowed them to become one of the best defensive teams of the past decade by both the boxscore and underlying numbers. That allowed them to survive Father Time catching up to both Nico Lodeiro and Raúl Ruidíaz, and to do so with some style, finishing second in the West and ranking among the league leaders in possession, passes per possession and field tilt.

This was all true again in 2024, and the big change was supposed to be the arrival of DP winger Pedro de la Vega, who was acquired for a reported $7 million last winter in place of the departed Lodeiro. It wasn’t like for like – de la Vega is, as mentioned, a winger – but the hope was he’d be the type of final third creator who’d take all that useful possession the midfield and fullbacks generate and turn it into penetration and chances.

Didn’t happen. De la Vega spent most of the year hurt, then was mostly ineffective when he wasn’t hurt. Seattle badly need the young Argentine to be a Gass Theorem™ guy in 2025 and come good on his lofty expectations.

I still think going after a winger of de la Vega’s ostensible profile was the right choice. They just backed the wrong horse, leaving the match-winning plays to the same group of guys as last year (with predictable results).

By May, it was clear Ruidíaz was turbo-cooked and someone else needed to become the starting No. 9. At which point two things happened:

• Former academy kid/Tacoma Defiance product Paul Rothrock showed he was more than good enough to be a starting winger on a pretty good team.
• Jordan Morris reminded us all why, 10 years ago, he was considered a super high-level No. 9 prospect.

Morris, who has spent…