NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Sunday, November 10th, 2019

MLS Cup returns to Cascadia as Seattle Sounders defeat Toronto FC at home

Seat­tle has anoth­er championship!

The Seat­tle Sounders brought a sec­ond MLS Cup home to Cas­ca­dia this after­noon in front of a sold-out crowd at Cen­tu­ryLink Field, defeat­ing Toron­to FC 3–1 to become Major League Soc­cer’s 2019 champions.

It was the third cham­pi­onship match played between the two teams.

The Sounders defeat­ed Toron­to in 2016 to secure their first-ever MLS Cup, then lost a rematch to Toron­to one year lat­er, in 2017.

Today, the Sounders avenged that loss on their own home turf.

It was the most sat­is­fy­ing win in fran­chise his­to­ry, one that will be savored and remem­bered for a long, long, long, long time.

“Walk­ing out, I got a lit­tle teary-eyed, because it’s a huge moment. You real­ize this before the game starts, the few pre­cious moments before and you’re lit­er­al­ly inside the pow­derkeg – it’s incred­i­ble, it’s a dream come true,” goal­keep­er Ste­fan Frei said in com­ments reflect­ing on the sig­nif­i­cance of the game.

The team scored all three of its goals in the sec­ond half.

Kelvin Leer­dam scored the first goal, with a lit­tle bit of help from Toron­to (the ball zigzagged into the net thanks to a deflec­tion gone wrong).

Vic­tor Rodriguez scored the sec­ond goal with a pic­ture-per­fect shot past Quentin West­berg, the Toron­to keep­er, into the corner.

Raul Ruidi­az scored the final goal not long after, putting the game out of reach from the vis­it­ing team. Toron­to did man­age to answer with one goal, avert­ing a shutout, but by that point, the Sounders’ vic­to­ry felt all but inevitable.

Since its found­ing in 2009, this team has become one of Major League Soc­cer’s most dec­o­rat­ed fran­chis­es. In ten years, the team has accom­plished all of this:

  • MLS Cup cham­pi­ons (2): 2016, 2019
  • MLS Cup run­ners-up (1): 2017
  • MLS Cup Play­off berths (10): 2010–2019
  • Sup­port­ers’ Shield (1): 2014
  • U.S. Open Cup cham­pi­ons (3): 2010, 2011, 2014
  • U.S. Open Cup run­ners-up (1): 2012
  • Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League berths (5): 2010–2012, 2015, 2018

In addi­tion, Seat­tle has won six Cas­ca­dia Cup titles (in 2006, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2018, and 2019). Seat­tle is tied with Van­cou­ver for the most Cas­ca­dia Cup titles over­all. The MLS incar­na­tion of the Sounders has the most Cup titles (four).

NPI con­grat­u­lates the Sounders on their sec­ond MLS Cup vic­to­ry. It was no easy feat, but they pulled it off and gave their fans the best hol­i­day gift imag­in­able. Thanks for lift­ing every­one’s spir­its, Sounders. We’ll trea­sure this championship.

Now it’s time to cel­e­brate. See you at the vic­to­ry parade on Tuesday!

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One Comment

  1. Sounders got a wild card in ’09 too. Longest streak of play­off appear­ances for an MLS team and only team to go to the play­offs in every year of exis­tence (so far).

    # by KT :: November 11th, 2019 at 10:55 AM
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