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Nos Audietis, Episode 274: Talking transfer window with Garth Lagerwey
65 Plays7 years ago
The winter transfer window closes on May 1. If you’re reading this the same day it publishes, that means today. Chances are, the Sounders aren’t going to be signing anyone.
We talked to Garth Lagerwey about that, as well as the Seattle Sounders’ place in Sports Illustrated’s Ambition Rankings (they’re fifth, behind Atlanta United, Toronto FC and both Los Angeles teams). That dove-tailed into a conversation about training facilities and finally into transfer targets. Give it a listen.
This week's music: RVIVR - "Ocean Song", Perry Como - "Seattle", RVIVR - “The Tide”, Woody Guthrie - "Roll On Columbia"
Thanks to James Woollard, Sounders Public Address Announcer, for doing our sponsor reads. You can follow him on Twitter at @BritVoxUS - if you're looking for a British Voice to advertise your business or non-profit, please reach out to him.
Want to hear the music from the show in their glorious, full versions? Check out the Nos Audietis playlist on Spotify!
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Transcript
Introduction to Full Pool Wines and Sponsors
00:00:00
Speaker
This episode of Nos Adieres is sponsored by Full Pool Wines. Full Pool Wines are based in Seattle, owned and operated by Sanders fans, and have been sponsoring Nos Adieres since 2011. They offer the best boutique wines of the world to members of their mailing list, with special focus on their home, the Pacific Northwest. Their model is simple. One, they email compelling offers.
00:00:23
Speaker
Two, you request bottles that sound appealing. And three, your wine arrives at their soda warehouse and is ready for pickup or shipping. Their soda tasting room is also open to the public.
Show Introduction by Seattle Sounders Players
00:00:35
Speaker
If you're interested in joining their mailing list or learning more about them, visit fullpaulwines.com. Hey, this is Christian Roldan. And Jordan Morris from the Seattle Sounders Football Club. And you're listening to There's No Study at Discs.
Interview with Garth Legaway: Season Challenges
00:01:14
Speaker
Welcome back to another edition of Noose Adiatus. So this is actually a bit of a special episode. We're not going to do the full thing.
00:01:24
Speaker
It's just me today, and I am going to air an interview that I did with Garth Legaway on Friday, which was two days before the sounders played LAFC at LAFC and of course lost that game. They're now 1-4-1.
00:01:42
Speaker
which I believe is tied for the worst start in team history, which is obviously not great. Honestly, I thought the Sounders looked pretty good in the LA match. I thought that there was a lot of reason to think that they at least deserved a point. I thought that especially in the first half, they looked like the better team, they had more chances, they had the better chances.
00:02:06
Speaker
I think around the 70th minute or so, they started to tire clearly after Alonzo went out, especially. It looked like they were getting stretched, but it still really looked like they were going to get a point out of that game until Lawrence Siwan got to take a free kick from about 28 yards out.
In-depth Match Analysis against LAFC
00:02:25
Speaker
He hits it a knuckling ball that wraps around the wall and Frye has it and it goes right through his arms. A tougher ball than I think it looked like to actually save. It had a lot of swerve on it. That said, it's clearly the kind of save that Stephen Frye is used to making.
00:02:46
Speaker
And it's a bummer that he didn't make it. He's saved a lot more games than he's cost us, so I think that's something that we can forgive him. But it brings us back to the sounders, the state of the sounders, which is not where they want to be, not where we want them to be.
Garth Lagois on League Ambitions and Spending Strategies
00:03:04
Speaker
And granted, the interview that I did with Garth Lagois is before that loss.
00:03:09
Speaker
I think he probably had expectations that they were going to be lucky to get a win. They probably have been very happy to get a tie. So I don't know that the situation they find themselves in is all that different than the situation that we were talking about the Sounders being in. But I feel like it's important in full disclosure to say that the interview did happen on Friday. Anyway, we talk a lot about the
00:03:35
Speaker
The Sports Illustrated Ambition ranking, the Sounders were fifth, which he says that he thought was fair. I think that it is probably an accurate depiction of where the Sounders are in terms of ambition in this league.
00:03:51
Speaker
And that's to say that they want to win titles. They want to compete for titles. I think they're willing to spend a lot of money to get to titles.
Transfer Window Strategy and Player Acquisitions
00:03:59
Speaker
But they're also not pretending as if they're going to spend the same as a first-year expansion team in LAFC who just built a $320 million stadium. They're not pretending as if they're going to spend the same as
00:04:12
Speaker
the ads Atlanta United who is drawing these huge even bigger crowds in the Sounders and have even more money back in them. They're not pretending as if they're going to spend the same as the Galaxy who frankly, they've never spent as much as they're not pretending as if they're going to spend as much as Toronto FC. Again, a team who has always outspent the Sounders.
00:04:31
Speaker
In some ways, I think that it's a very fair ranking. But anyway, I wanted to talk to Garth about the way he sees the league and the way he sees the center's place in it. We also talk a lot about the transfer window. I actually wrote a story for Sender at Heart about a lot of those quotes, where this is going to come out, I guess, the morning of the final day of the transfer window.
00:04:57
Speaker
Barring a surprise, I don't think that the Sounders are going to make a move. Garth certainly didn't sound like they were going to make a move. Best I can tell, they have offers out to players. Those players, they don't expect to decide to leave their teams before the end of their European seasons. And their expectation is that one of those players is going to end up joining them in the summer. He seems very confident that they'll get a player of a DP quality in the summer.
00:05:27
Speaker
I tend to believe him, but I can understand why standards fans are starting to get frustrated. This is not a great time right now to be, it doesn't feel like this is a good place that you want to be in. This is the third straight year that the centers have kind of struggled out of the gate and it's starting to become a pattern. And actually it might be the fourth, no, it's the third straight year. And it's starting to feel like a pattern. It's starting to feel as if the centers just don't value the early part of the season.
00:05:57
Speaker
I think that you'll probably see, you'll hear some things from Garth that back up the idea that they don't think that these early season games are quite as important as late season games in his defense. He also points out that they were in CONCACAF Champions League for the first two of those games, that those definitely had effect on what they were able to do in MLS play.
00:06:22
Speaker
And that since then, they've gone one, two, and one, which isn't great, obviously. One of those games was the red card against Montreal. And they've looked pretty good in the other three, though. And I think there's every reason to think that this is going to be a better team. At the same time, I wanted them to sign a backup quality striker during this window, at the very least, because I think that this is a team in desperate need.
Sounders' League Ambitions and Club Comparisons
00:06:48
Speaker
of more speed, of more attacking prowess, of better options off the bench, and that is just something that Garth apparently didn't feel as if they needed, and that his argument was that if this player isn't going to clearly make us better, I would rather hold off on making that signing. Anyway,
00:07:08
Speaker
I'll let you listen to the interview. I'll let you make your own opinions about what he said. We'll come back. I'll talk a little bit more about it. And yeah, you're listening to Nos Arietes.
00:07:24
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:08:58
Speaker
mission rating stuff, and it's kind of been a topic of conversation, as you may or may not know, on Sounded Heart. How do you, like, you guys are ranked fifth, I don't know, that seems...
00:09:10
Speaker
It feels about right to me. The teams that are ahead of you are undeniably doing a lot of stuff that is very public. But anyway, how would you describe the club's ambition at this point? I did read the rankings, but in my brain I'm not recalling it. Atlanta, LA, both LA.
00:09:34
Speaker
Toronto, maybe Toronto. We look from a payroll perspective. That's probably just a like for like, right? We got an academy. I mean, you could nitpick trifle with things. The answer to your question is maybe New York was maybe one of those things wasn't in New York was but
00:09:53
Speaker
Yeah, no, and I remember looking at it and being like, wow, this is weird that NYCFC to me is that low. That are they accounting for the true Man City scouting network, and they just opened a facility, which now they're starting an academy, and again, I grant you, they don't have a stadium, which I'm sure they get dinged for, but I also don't think they're gonna get a stadium anytime soon, so to call them on ambitious is, I think they're 13th or something like that? Was it that low?
00:10:22
Speaker
Right below you was like Kansas City and Portland and RSL. Yeah, so we should be above them in my opinion then. I would put in my brain I have NYCFC based on how they spend and how they conduct themselves as maybe part of that top group and maybe the stadium would qualify something.
00:10:38
Speaker
They certainly seem ambitious. I mean, they're literally trying to, I have no doubt they're trying to build a stadium in New York and that itself is ambitious. It's probably the most ambitious thing any team is trying to do. Exactly. But no, it feels about right. And I think what we've seen is the, what I'd call the transition of, not the evolution of the league now, where you have
00:11:00
Speaker
In the West, at least for a long time, it was the Galaxy and the Sounders. And those were the kind of bulkheads. And look, Toronto, after a decade, finally figured it out. And you have the New York and LA two team things, to me, have worked. I mean, give the league credit. They've strengthened both clubs in LA and strengthened both clubs in New York, in my opinion. And then Atlanta's a force of nature.
00:11:27
Speaker
And what's awesome is, and maybe flattering, is that all of those folks call us when they are getting started and say, what'd you do? What were you thinking about? And that's credit to people that, definitely not me. That's Adrian Hanauer and Gary Wright and the folks who launched the Sounders. So it's Bart Wiley, etc.
00:11:50
Speaker
You know, that's cool. And I think when you look at our fan base, you say we're second to Atlanta, 11 years in. And Seattle is the, depending on how you define it, the 12th or 19th are in that range market size in the country.
00:12:07
Speaker
That's pretty cool. Atlanta is a much bigger place than Seattle is and has had lots of recent immigration there as well as, of course, Seattle has as well. But anyway, I think we're punching above our weight, as I've said, numerous times in public. And because of our fan base, we are able to hang with these bigger markets like
Long-term Success and Domestic Player Development
00:12:29
Speaker
New York and LA. So there was a time
00:12:32
Speaker
you know, maybe even when you were first hired that the idea was that the Sounders were trying to be like the best team in North America. Would you say that that goal has changed or is it just you look at the or is it different than the goal? The ambition is not necessarily reflective of what your goal is.
00:12:56
Speaker
I mean, look, I guess my short-term answer is, you know, we won the title in 60, we went to the final in 17. Turns out the team we lost to in 17 that we were so castigated for having lost to was pretty decent on a continental scale. So maybe that loss looks, maybe there's a little bit more perspective around that one off night for us.
00:13:16
Speaker
So I think what I mean to say is I think we're still a decent team. Certainly we believe we can win championships with this squad, with these resources, with our current level of ambition. We still target stuff like Champions League as a global brand. It's a bummer. We had, if you count Bruin and Marshall, had Kevin to go out in the first half, we were missing eight starters at one point in that game. I mean, that's not great luck. We can always make excuses.
00:13:46
Speaker
That was a tough situation. Be one of the biggest clubs in the world, be the biggest club in MLS. The path there, to me, is still through Champions League. We gave it our best shot. It didn't work out this time. We're going to try to get back there. And the other way to get back there is by winning MLS Cups.
00:14:04
Speaker
We're gonna try to do that. So it's obviously one thing to say that But how do you think you go about actually showing that that this is that it's you know It's obviously it's one thing to say, you know winning Champions League is our goal. It's another thing to I guess win Champions League or to otherwise to otherwise show the to put in the the the pieces that require that that allow you to do that and
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah, so, I mean, it sounds like you're referencing DP spending, things like that. Yeah, or whatever. I mean, like, or whatever, whatever path you see to getting there is, what do you see as that path, essentially, is what I'm saying.
00:14:44
Speaker
Long term, that's the academy. I mean, you look at how valuable domestic players have become in a league with only eight foreign spots and all the tan money, all the DP money in now. You have to have quality American players as part of your group. We believe in the last three years when we started investing heavily, ownership was generous enough to more than double their investment in that space. We've made monstrous strides. I mean, national championship, semi-final,
00:15:12
Speaker
in the, was at 19. So third place finish for the 19s and quarterfinal finish for the 17s. S2 is the best it's ever been in terms of the number of prospects on that team. And I think they're starting to even get results now at a higher clip. Feel really good about where that team is under John Hutchinson's and Wade Weber's leadership. And as those kids fill up right now in our roster, we have three homegrown players. Ideally,
00:15:40
Speaker
We would have at least half a dozen and hopefully eventually as many as 10. I think if a 30 or Austria were home-growns, that would be a really great complement to call it five Tams and 3DPs I think is what we have now. So maybe that moves by one up or down.
00:15:57
Speaker
But now that's 18, 19, 20 guys out of a 30-man roster. The reality is we never fill 30-man roster anyway. So when you're really talking about 25 players, so now you got to find five players. And the people at the entry level of your phase of your roster are guys who know your system, you know their mentality, you know the character and personality they have up.
00:16:18
Speaker
skin in the game in the sense that a lot of them are local kids or at least have been here for a while. So I think that's how we compete. Are we going to spend dollar for dollar with the Emirates Control Manchester City affiliated NYCFC? Probably not. Are we going to spend dollar for dollar with Arthur Blank and the NFL Falcons? Maybe not. But I don't think we need to. And I've said this consistently as well,
00:16:46
Speaker
We don't need stars here. Again, because of our fan base, if we bring good players, our fans are knowledgeable and they want us to win. And so I think if you win and you bring good players, so far at least, I think we continue to enjoy the support of our fans.
Training Facilities and S2 Team Integration
00:17:03
Speaker
So that will also be an advantage for us.
00:17:06
Speaker
And so one of the other areas that I guess you could kind of point to both in these ambition ratings and in and in overall the way that the team is perceived is like these training facilities. I don't think anyone would come out here and see what you have on the field here as being anything less than, you know, pretty amazing. But once you get off the field here and you look at the rest of Starfire, you know, in 2009 Starfire was
00:17:32
Speaker
top three or four facility in the league. Now with a dozen teams basically building drone training facilities that are tens of millions of dollars, it's somewhere closer to the middle of the pack. Is there a plan to get Starfire farther up that list and how important is it to, is it even an important thing at this point? That's okay.
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah, look, having a very good facility is when you talk about, MLS is advancing, right? When salary caps doubled in the last two years, your infrastructure has to change with that because you're attracting more good players, their expectations are higher, you have to deliver on that. That said, we literally just had some folks in from Argentina yesterday, and they were like, holy cow, what a great facility. And so, as compared to, because it's not just MLS, right? Because your comment is referencing
00:18:30
Speaker
Are there newer facilities in ours? Yes, there have been. A number of teams have joined the league, and they've built great facilities. And again, we look at that as a positive. This is the rising tide lifting all boats. But if you compare us to the folks we've had in this year, to Belgium, to France, to Spain, people are coming here and telling us, hey, this facility is really killer relative to all but the very biggest teams in our country.
00:18:58
Speaker
And so I think globally, you're able to compete from a recruiting perspective. Do we want to modernize some things, update some things? We do. And I'm hopeful that in the next couple of years, we'll do that, you know, that we'll move forward on those types of things. And, you know, I think with any building, any infrastructure, we're talking about bricks and mortar.
00:19:20
Speaker
every decade or so you're gonna probably look at and say hey can we can we can we update we upgrade what our other folks doing you know what is the norm what's what's the expectation and you know try to do things in the meantime to make our players happy and I think that we do that I think we treat our players very well you know whether it's food or facilities or support for families and things like that that maybe are more intangible but I think just as important
00:19:47
Speaker
Do you think you can build a, does Starfire have the infrastructure that allows you to improve here or would improving require leaving? No, no, I don't, far from it. You know, we've had conversations with Starfire about, hey, how can we make this work? And they've been open to that.
00:20:06
Speaker
Adrian and the owners of Starfire have a 20 year plus relationship. And so you're able to be very honest with them and very open. And again, we'd be working together to try to push something out here long term. That would certainly be our preference based on our conversations. Again, they would be open to that as well.
00:20:24
Speaker
And so how does S2 work into all that? From a surface it seems like S2 was in a better position than they may have ever been. How far away is their stadium and is that seemingly
00:20:42
Speaker
fitting what you guys had in mind, that whole situation there? Yeah, I mean, look, we're going through a stadium process right now. There's multiple parties, public and private involved there. So I mean, you simply have to let the process play out. And again, everyone's been very friendly and very willing and very helpful. And look, I think every time we draw a good crowd in Tacoma, it helps our standing in terms of having the political support. Because when you're talking about building the stadium, those are political processes. And the politics are a living animal.
00:21:12
Speaker
We have every reason to believe that we're going to go ahead and we're going to get what we were looking for in the beginning. But likewise, I think it would be equally foolish to say, oh yeah, it's going to be exactly what we thought it was going to be when we first sketched it out a year ago. This stuff changes. Our plans change. Different things change, whether that's something like a rugby team or a women's team or all of those things factor into that kind of stuff.
00:21:42
Speaker
So yeah, look, I am very bullish on us too. We are very bullish on us too. We've had great partners in Tacoma with the Reniers.
00:21:50
Speaker
You know, our technical people will tell you it's night and day from an atmosphere perspective in terms of being able to pimp people in the stands and a real animated atmosphere and putting our young players under pressure, all of which will prepare them when we try to bring them up. So we are, you know, couldn't be more excited than, you know, I think you've heard this from me before too, Jeremiah. The other really big strategic piece of all this is we now have the Sounders in Seattle. We have the training facility in Tequilla and we have S2 in Tacoma. And so in terms of becoming a
00:22:19
Speaker
But the very least, Western Washington, eventually a Washington team as opposed to a Seattle team, that is a massive, massive thing for us going forward in terms of the big picture. And so I think that footprint is going to be good. I know that's maybe true on the branding and business side, but I would tell you it's also true on the soccer
Player Acquisition Strategy and Injury Impacts
00:22:36
Speaker
side. If we get all of the best soccer players from everywhere in Washington, that's going to make us, you know, get our competition is not
00:22:44
Speaker
The club's here, it's New York, it's LA. And we have to be efficient, we have to get all the best kids on one team. And so I guess the final question, the final element of all this, and you kind of brought it up earlier, was the DP or any signing situation. The window obviously closes in a few days.
00:23:07
Speaker
Are you holding out much hope for getting something done? And then what's that say for the summer either way? I thought for a while that it's going to be very difficult to get things done now before Tuesday. A lot of that's World Cup related. There's just no one that wants to move. And no one is who's. It's not no one, but you know.
00:23:27
Speaker
We kind of said hey, it would take a surprise deal to fall into our lap to get something done on a player who wants to switch clubs Literally now less than a month before you get called into the World Cup. So You know, I think realistically it's it's very likely in the summer and and that's okay We believe that we have a good team. We said that
00:23:49
Speaker
And we're slowly, slowly, slowly getting healthy. Whether that's Kim, hopefully, soon, Victor, Magnus getting better integrated into the team. I think if you look at the performances of some of the young guys like Kenwalla and Wingo and Bwana and you'd say, hey, we have some reasons for optimism.
00:24:12
Speaker
So that's to say that most of the kind of players you're looking at right now are the type of players who would be potentially playing in World Cup.
00:24:20
Speaker
in the World Cup? Not exclusively that, but I think the players that are of an international caliber, which is, I mean, not surprising in that DP market. And again, maybe you saw in the Argentine, who's maybe not in the Argentine, that's because they adapt to the number of players. But it's the same pool that I think you've seen us look in before. Obviously, the positional needs are a little different. I think we need to get someone now who scores some goals for us. Ideally, somebody who has
00:24:49
Speaker
I don't know that blazing pace is important, but I think some ability to move between the lines, to move in little spaces, be a little bit more creative off the dribble. And it doesn't have to be all of those things, but I think you probably need one of those things.
00:25:04
Speaker
You just have to have, with the loss of Jordan, you need in the short term to have some ability to stretch a defense, whether vertically or horizontally. But likewise, hopefully identify a player that allows Jordan to come back and play a role for the team in the long term as well.
00:25:21
Speaker
So you bring up Jordan, you know when his injury first happened there was this sense that that dramatically changed the outlook of what kind of player you were looking for and both in the short term and potentially in the long term.
00:25:38
Speaker
Do you like I don't know what how would you describe that and how did you settle in? It sounds like right as it as you are right now. It doesn't I don't get the sense that adding someone right now is Considered to be like a number one
00:25:54
Speaker
Look, no one is opposed to adding a player now as opposed to later. There are some incentives with the TAM rules to sign a player later. In other words, that you spend less money buying down the player, that you have to move out of the DP spot, and likewise you have a lower cap hit for a player coming in this summer. And so from a long-term planning perspective,
00:26:17
Speaker
All things equal there. There is some incentive in the rules to sign a player in the summer as opposed to now. But again, no one is not seeking to sign a player now. What I meant to express perhaps inarticulately simply was our reading of the marketplace was if we didn't get a deal the first week of February right after Europe closed,
00:26:39
Speaker
Realistically, this is because of the World Cup here. You probably weren't going to see a lot of movement in this next couple of months. And look, we were looking for an attacking player all along. We just now are more focused on the goal-scoring aspect of that attacking player, having lost Jordan. But is it a radical change? Look, we got Will Bruins. Awesome. I mean, he's been fabulous. We made the final with him as our primary forward.
00:27:06
Speaker
you know, for better or worse, we missed Jordan for the last couple of months last season. And so we are, again, we prefer, we'd love to have the kid, but we're used to playing without him at this point, too. So I think it's about complimenting his skillset, complimenting Will's skillset, complimenting Clint's skillset, Niko's, Victor's, et cetera, and just trying to build around what you have and trying to add a piece. And, you know, again, I know folks say, well,
00:27:30
Speaker
I read sometimes, you know, you send it forward and yes, if you lose a player for the entire season then you're going to have one less player and then you need to bring in another player to have the same number of players and so we're seeking to do that.
00:27:44
Speaker
Well, I mean, and I guess I'll say from, you know, I'm certainly one of these people who, I mean, I'll tell you right now, I'm sure I'll end up writing on May 2nd, not getting some peace at forward feels like a failure. And I guess the question is, like, and I get, and I think I definitely get, like, look, you want to sound a world-class player.
00:28:08
Speaker
you have to make sure that you're able to do that when that player is available and you don't want to just bring in someone but it did it has started to feel like bringing in someone
00:28:20
Speaker
was important and maybe are we kind of overselling just the idea of bringing in someone and by someone I mean like a guy who is going to compete with Lamar for backing up Will more so than someone who automatically displaces Will. Our worldview is that we have a decent team and so we're going to try to bring in players to make us better like clearly better.
00:28:43
Speaker
You know, the DP, realistically at the dollar levels, you're talking about a three and a half year deal, probably at a minimum. And so I just, as much as it would, I think appease some folks to sign that player in three months, I would argue that
00:29:00
Speaker
the future of the franchise is much more tied to the next three and a half years. And look, I don't disagree that that might cause some short-term pain. But that's my job, is to be willing to weather some storms and to say, hey, have some critical pieces written, which I understand. And again, it's not out of complacency. It's about this idea that
00:29:21
Speaker
I am charged with being the steward of the club over a longer period of time than, you know, one transfer window. So, and look, I also understand the frustration, like, that we haven't, you know, we had, since Ledera, we haven't made a big DP signing. Like, I got, there's no reason to run from that or tuck that either. Like, it's been, we've been looking. You know, it honestly hasn't been one where we felt like we have to do this right now. But what I would say is, with Morris going out, that we have to do it. I got no problem saying that either.
00:29:50
Speaker
So wait for the right time, find the right deal, find the right player, find the right fit. But look, candidly, if we had signed the player we were pursuing in January, and then Jordan got hurt, we wouldn't be up a creek. But it wouldn't have been ideal in terms of how the fit was with the rest of the group. But I think we would have been criticized for that just as much as having waited.
00:30:19
Speaker
I do sincerely understand fan frustration, media frustration, things like, you want to win every game. And we know that it's easier to win an MLS Cup at home than it is on the road. Again, these things are all pretty objectively true. But I also don't think that, and I know the folks in Toronto pretty well.
00:30:42
Speaker
I don't think anybody there is saying, gosh, I don't know if we're going to make the playoffs because we put all this into the Champions League. And the fact is the first couple games that we played in the MLS were impacted by Champions League. And it's a choice we made. And we said publicly that's what we were going to do. I think we lived up to what we said, to act though or pretend again that there's no consequence to prioritizing Champions League.
00:31:06
Speaker
I think is naive. And so, you know, even if you just say, hey, those two games aside, then we play three games in the league and we're one, one and one. And, you know, we got a red card in the game. We lost and we won the home game. And, you know, it's, I just don't think there's a big sample size, honestly.
Garth Legaway on Long-term Strategy and Fan Engagement
00:31:25
Speaker
Again, my starting point is when you bring back 16 guys from the team that's been the back-to-back finals, it's not in the irrational position to say we believe that we're a decent team. And that's a team that, again, I think will continue to improve. Because the other part of it that's immutable, if you play 11 months, two years in a row, it's not an age thing. It's a wear and tear thing. Guys get beat up, and you can make the choice to force them back in March.
00:31:54
Speaker
or you can let him come back gradually, and then hopefully stay on the field when they get back. And if the perception is that somehow we're not taking seriously the first part of the season, then again, what I would say is we're trying to make long-term decisions, not short-term decisions. And we're trying to make decisions in the best interest of our players, not around a crisis, whether invented or real. In March, we heard Coach Metzer say it after the last game that, look,
00:32:25
Speaker
There just really aren't must win games in April. And again, it doesn't mean that you're throwing away the season. It doesn't mean that those games aren't important. It doesn't mean that you can afford to fall double digit points behind. But I think we feel like better days are ahead. And I'll end on this note. And I think you brought up a little bit of frustration that
00:32:47
Speaker
We deal with a lot that we end up kind of addressing a lot. I don't think anyone is arguing that the Sounders aren't a decent team and that the Sounders maybe aren't even likely to miss the playoffs, but I think the frustration comes from
00:33:04
Speaker
the standard being set of we want to win MLS cups, we want to play MLS cup at home, and when you start 1-3-1, which I think is justifiable, but I think it's allowing 1-3-1 to becoming 4-6-2, where it's like, okay, now we're getting into a point in the season where it's harder to achieve these goals that we said are our goals.
00:33:32
Speaker
All fair. And again, if you go back to 2016, which is something we definitely don't ever want to repeat, 20 points in 20 games, and we finished with the fourth seed. And we played, we hosted the first round. And I think from a playoff format standpoint, certainly there's some advantage to finishing in the top two and avoiding that wildfire game. I think it's critical that you finish in the top four. And so those are the things that, yes, is the win the supporter shield.
00:34:01
Speaker
Is that there? Yeah, it is. It gives you the best chance to host. But again, that's the regular season championship, and the one that matters is MLS Cup. And it's not lost on us things like in the year when the Golden State Warriors won 73-10 and set the record, or 73-9, and then didn't win the title. I'm glad you clicked yourself in. I'd be here. My bowl's upbringing would have
00:34:26
Speaker
It was 72 and 10 that the Bulls went, right? Exactly. That's 73 and 9 for the Warriors. You know, and look, I do think that the league's evolving this way as well, right? I mean, when you look at regular season, I've talked about this multiple times, that it's not a balanced schedule. You literally don't play the same opponents. You don't play the same opponents the same number of times. You don't play them in sequence. It's, you know, you have guys going for the World Cup. You have other teams that aren't affected by that. You have
00:34:50
Speaker
you know, some in champions like it's just not a level playing field. It's not intended to be a level playing field. And therefore I think it's the goal is get as many points as you can. Obviously, it's a nice thing if you get something like that. But the most important thing is setting yourself up for key playoff runs. And again, the evidence is that the last two years under Brian's leadership,
00:35:12
Speaker
We've been in a good position to make a good playoff run. And again, to be absolutely clear, that does not mean the regular season does not matter. That is not at all what I'm saying. You have to approve these things. It's just it is a slow and steady wins the race as opposed to a sprint out ahead and then risk potentially crashing because again, I don't mean to be
00:35:34
Speaker
kind of sending with by saying like we're a decent team and all that. What I need to articulate just is if you have some floor that you believe the team won't fall below, that then makes more rational a building strategy. If you, you know, in a ramping up strategy, if you have real concerns about the group and if you're not, you're going to see and again,
00:35:57
Speaker
I run the risk of sounding arrogant the other way. Nothing is given. We have to earn this. There's no guarantee we're going to make the playoffs. But the reality is that you're not going to make everyone happy with your answer. There's no question about it. What I would say, though, which I think I've said consistently across platforms is we have to think big picture, or at least in my role I have to. And that, by its very nature, may upset some folks. And that's what we have to be willing to tolerate.
00:36:22
Speaker
to understand and you know and hopefully look to have a conversation like this and a trust and say hey look we're not gonna please everybody right but here's what we're doing here's why we're doing it be transparent about it and then folks will debate that and and hopefully keep showing up in the stadium well Garth I really appreciate it all right man
Host's Reflection on Fan Frustrations and Transparency
00:36:43
Speaker
Welcome back. Thanks to Garth Legaway for taking the time to talk to us about that. I would like to think that one of the takeaways from this interview is you put aside what you may have thought of Garth's comments.
00:37:04
Speaker
may have disagreed with him, you may have been frustrated by them. But I think that you can, I would like to think that we can agree that he's speaking from a place of honesty, that he's putting it out there as like, this is how he feels. You may not like that, you may not think that he's doing the right thing, I think we can disagree on, on the path. But I do want to push back on one of the things that I've kind of heard
00:37:33
Speaker
recently, which is that Garth just doesn't care about what fans think. And I think if that were true, Garth wouldn't be coming on to our podcast. He wouldn't be doing things like Yacht-Con. He wouldn't be doing a weekly radio show on, is it KJR? I think it's KJR, right? On whoever is broadcasting the Sounders games.
00:38:01
Speaker
he wouldn't be making himself available to the media on a regular basis. He wouldn't be making himself available to fans on a regular basis. The reason he does those things is because he cares about what sounders fans thinks. He wants sounders fans to feel like they are at least informed of the process. And I mean, yes, he literally says,
00:38:26
Speaker
We appreciate the fans of the fans are a huge part of what we're doing. Like he literally uses those words. And and I know that sometimes people feel as if that's that he's talking down to them. But I think he's being honest. Like he's he knows that this is a very special thing that we have here.
00:38:41
Speaker
And I think that that's actually core of what he's trying to do, because it would be very easy for him to treat the sounders as if it was a one or two or three-year project where he was just trying to win as much as possible. But I do think that he's honest in his desire to set the sounders up for a long-term success. And of course, that's self-fulfilling. Of course, that's self-serving.
00:39:10
Speaker
That is true, that as long as you keep saying the most important thing is three and a half years from now instead of three months from now, that you're always three and a half years away from being judged. But let's look back at the last two years. This is a team that has been to two straight MLS Cup Finals that has won one MLS Cup Final. They have still won it, even if you only look at the time that he's been in charge, they have one of the best regular season records in the league.
00:39:38
Speaker
uh that doesn't excuse or make every decision that he is making right i think there's a lot of room for criticism i think that
00:39:46
Speaker
This criticism is important. I think it's important for him to hear those things. I think it's important for him to know that fans are not happy. And I think that at some point we got to figure out how to get beyond these slow starts and that the centers need to strive to have as completed of a roster as possible early in the season, ideally with having some flexibility. And I'll also say that a couple months ago,
00:40:11
Speaker
I was saying that the sounders absolutely needed a third center back. That was the most important thing they needed to do before the end of this transfer window. They, of course, got that in Kim Kihi. That was, of course, before, I believe, the Jordan Morris injury.
00:40:27
Speaker
And so it's, it's kind of a, you know, the ends up being kind of a moving target of what they need. But, uh, I, I thought that the most important thing they needed was, uh, was another center back. Uh, the, the jury is still very much out on Magnus Wolf Eichrum, whether or not that was really a great, a good signing or not.
00:40:44
Speaker
But I think he at least increases the competition in the roster. I think that he gives us a depth piece. Maybe he's never going to be a clear starter. It's definitely of somewhat concern that Alex Roldon has apparently beaten him out for a starting spot. I don't know that I agree with those decisions.
00:41:02
Speaker
but uh it is it's definitely room for criticism and there's reason to question whether or not that was a great signing that said uh i do think that that garth is honest i think that he is
00:41:18
Speaker
being as straight with us as we can really ask. I think that he cares what fans think and I for one appreciate his willingness to come to talk to me, to come to our events, to talk to fans and I think that's kind of one of the things that makes The Sounders such a special organization. I don't think that other
00:41:40
Speaker
other fan bases are getting this kind of access. And I don't know, maybe in some ways that that's a thing that works against us. Maybe we're too soft on these guys. I'll let you guys I'll let you decide that. But anyway, I did want to say say thank you to Garth for taking the time and explaining this.
00:41:59
Speaker
you know, his state of mind as we go into this meat of the season. Hopefully the next time we talk to him, it will be under better circumstances when we have something more positive to talk about. Anyway, this is Nosadietes, and you'll never yell alone.
00:42:18
Speaker
where the water's cut through. Down to wild mountains and tangents you flew. Canadian northwest to the ocean so blue. It's Roll On, Columbia Roll On. Roll On, Columbia Roll On. Roll On, Columbia Roll On. Your power is turning our darkness to dawn. Roll On, Columbia Roll On.
00:43:04
Speaker
We love you. Let's win another one!