No. 11 on the list of U.S. Soccer momentous moments of the decade

I wrote a piece for Soccernet that went up yesterday detailing the most momentous, meaningful moments of past decade in U.S. soccer.

There was one more than I wanted to add into the list, but just couldn’t find a way to squeeze in: the moment Seattle Sounders FC came together as a franchise.

The Sounders addition definitely pushed MLS past sticking points in more than one way.

As for wedging Seattle onto my list, part of the problem is that it’s a little hard to pin down one moment that birthed the enterprise. That was the purpose to this piece, finding the singular moments that truly mattered in the big picture. I managed to fudge a little on others, such as the watershed ESPN-MLS agreement signed back in 2006, and the opening of the Home Depot Center. In that case, I was able to extract one moment, as the stadium opened in 2003. But in reality, of course, it was a long process of many moments linked together that led to the development of that important facility.

Was that too much of a stretch? Eh. There is, after all, some journalistic license involved in these pieces.

Also, you could make the argument that Toronto’s highly successful launch was as meaningful to MLS as Seattle’s, so that hurt my efforts to include the Sounders.

All that said, this is a little bit of a mea culpa. So, all you good Sounders fans, cut me a little slack, eh?