Fredy Montero, who made $1.25 million with Vancouver last season, accepted a minimum-wage offer of just more than $81,000 to return to a club that averaged 42,797 fans a game before the pandemic. That’s been a really successful strategy for us.”Īnother successful strategy has been creating an enjoyable, successful atmosphere players want to be a part of. Oftentimes they’re made famous while they’re here. “Because we have such deep and broad support, when we sign the best player we found consistently our fan base will adopt that player. or New York, sometimes there’s pressure to pick the famous player or the player you think is marketable. “Maybe this is a luxury of being in Seattle, but we always try to pick the best player,” Lagerwey said. Yet they’ve all gone on to become popular MLS all-stars, with the jerseys of Ruidíaz and Lodeiro ranking among the five best-sellers in the league. With the exception of Morris, who was a youth star in Seattle, few Sounders fans had heard of any of those players before they came to town. Before that, they re-signed Morris to the most lucrative contract for a homegrown player in MLS history, a five-year deal worth approximately $5 million.

In the last 11 months, for example, the Sounders have signed Joao Paulo Mior, picked up the 2022 option on Raúl Ruidíaz and extended Lodeiro’s contract. And ownership here has been incredible about taking all the resources we have and putting it back into the team.” “One of the kind of truisms that I operate by,” he continued, “is I’m as good as my ownership allows me to be. And so, if you can keep the floor to a certain level, then even when you have problems with the ceiling you have mechanisms in place to bail you out. “If you have a well-run organization with good processes, you’re building in backups and you’re building in fail-safes. “When we could have had that down year, when we have this rash of injuries at the beginning, we had these kids that were ready to step in. We’ve been spending money for five years,” said Lagerwey, who went out of his way to acknowledge the contributions of his staff. “We’ve been working on this for five years. Seattle filled in those minutes by dipping into its academy, where it got 62 appearances and 31 starts combined from a half-dozen teenagers. Yet even smart spending can’t prevent the kind of injuries that limited two of Seattle’s millionaires - Nicolás Lodeiro and Jordan Morris - to a combined 11 appearances and two starts in the regular season. With four players earning more than $1 million and six others making as least $500,000, they do. Which isn’t to say the Sounders don’t spend.

Games close to star defender 4 ipad