Seattle Sounders FC are one of three MLS teams participating in the expanded 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, hitting the global stage against world-class opponents.
They secured their place by winning the 2022 Concacaf Champions Cup, ending a run of 16 consecutive Mexican clubs that won the competition and becoming the first MLS team to lift the trophy in the modern era.
At the time, the final was a home-and-away series – or more accurately for the Sounders, an away-and-home series since they’d earned the right to host the second leg against LIGA MX grande Pumas.
But that meant a difficult away leg would set the tone for the series. Plenty of MLS teams have traveled to Mexico and seen their CCC title hopes upended by an adverse result – especially in a venue like the Estadio Olímpico Universitario, Pumas’ historic ground that sits at soaring heights.
The Sounders landed in Mexico two days before Leg 1, and players started to feel the effects of being more than 7,000 feet above sea level.
“You can certainly feel the altitude,” said midfielder Cristian Roldan. “Walking up the stairs, even at the hotel.”
A road performance for the ages
After a night of rest, the Sounders were up relatively early to train.
“Something unique with Champions League is you tend to train in the stadium the day before,” said goalkeeper Stefan Frei. “You get to see the surroundings, get used to it. But you also got a taste of the altitude a little bit.”
Frei still remembers the feeling of walking through the tunnel to the locker room underneath the field.
“You go underneath the field and then walk up a few steps," he recalled. "Well, it looks like a few steps, but your lungs tell you different.”
Despite, as homegrown midfielder Obed Vargas put it, “feeling the weight of the stadium," several Sounders also found it to be the perfect stage for a final.
Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer said the club "loves going to Mexico City,” and felt the nostalgia of the many great matches played at a stadium that has hosted Olympic and World Cup contests, as well as a mural of Diego Rivera created using volcanic rock.
“Personally, I felt a good energy,” said attacking midfielder Nico Lodeiro. “It was a bit like remembering what it’s like to play in Uruguay. The CU isn’t a modern stadium. The field isn’t either. It’s not like here in MLS or in modern stadiums.
"While it’s a beautiful field, the turf itself is very sort of the old style, it’s thick. I’m used to that from Uruguay," Lodeiro expanded. "The feeling when we were working the day before, doing the rondos, taking shots, while I felt the altitude a bit, I was ready and really enjoyed it.”
After training was over, the team watched a different crazy first leg of Champions League series – Manchester City’s 4-3 semifinal win over Real Madrid that would be overturned the next week at the Santiago Bernabéu. Then it was time for what several Sounders said was a difficult night’s sleep – not because of any trickery from Pumas fans, but simply because of the anticipation of what was to come.
In fact, the Sounders hotel was a bit of an oasis of support.
“I remember in the hotel we saw several fans from Seattle. We had a group of fans that were there that had the same dreams as us,” Lodeiro said. “Those things made you feel a positive energy.”
Seattle sunshine
Not every omen was encouraging.
“One little funny thing, the day of the game, we got served basically breakfast for pre-match. Maybe that was part of the mind games. Maybe it was an honest mistake,” said Albert Rusnák, who joined the club ahead of the 2022 season.
If evening bacon and eggs were an unwanted surprise, a different surprise was welcome: The weather in Mexico City that night was dreary, with heavy precipitation that reminded players of the skies they see in the Pacific Northwest.
“I love playing in the rain. It’s Seattle weather,” said homegrown forward Jordan Morris.
“It rained quite a lot,” Roldan recalled. “I remember the day of the game it rained a lot, and for some reason, the altitude felt a bit less than normal.”
“We like the rain!” Schmetzer said. “The rain is no problem for us.”
With the rain continuing to fall, both teams settled into the match with Frei making a pair of decent saves in the 10 minutes before the half-hour mark. In the 33rd minute, however, Pumas forward Juan Ignacio Dinenno was fouled in the box and stepped up to take the penalty. Frei pushed the ball up and over the bar, only for Video Review to signal to the referee that the shot needed to be retaken with Frei off the line.
“Top player. We did our homework on PKs. We saw that he liked to go high,” the goalkeeper recalled. “I was super stoked it went high, but obviously they reviewed it and saw that I think I was just barely off the line, which is brutal.”
Perhaps realizing Frei knew his tendencies, Dinenno sent the second shot low and to the goalkeeper’s left as the Sounders veteran dove right, and Pumas fans roared as “El Comandante” ran to the stands to celebrate with a salute.
The Sounders reached halftime down 1-0, and everyone remembers feeling fine. Schmetzer recalls asking the team to dial up the intensity.
“As the captain, you try to motivate the team,” Lodeiro said. “I was trying to stress to my teammates that we can make history. When you play soccer and dream of achieving big things, well, we’re at the door of making history for the city, the club, MLS, the chance to play in the Club World Cup. A lot of things happen in soccer. 1-0, 2-0 – they’re results that you can turn around.”
Survival mode
That may be true in theory, but the near-immediate second-half opener from Dinenno quickly tested how the Sounders would put their captain’s words into practice.
“The second goal is an unbelievable header,” Rusnák said. “I remember it live from the field. It’s like, there is no one to blame. We took a really nice and hard goal to score.”
“I think that's the beauty of our game and the beauty of that two-legged series. It changes the dynamics, right? But can you go on the front foot now and, without regard, just go for goal? No, because you take the third and this is over, right?” Frei said. “I think a 2-0 is not a good result. 1-0 was, I think, okay. Can you make 2-0 into 2-1 without being careless and making it a 3-0? Those are all the little nuanced things that I think make this sport very unique, very good.
"There’s tactics. There’s emotions.”
It is fair to say that, while the team’s top tactician had a plan, he was not thinking about the philosophy of soccer at that moment. After conceding a second, Schmetzer’s hope was simply to “survive. It was survival.
“In that moment, the shirt gets a little tighter and some of the players might feel it a little bit, but, again, I had veteran players. Nico and Raúl [Ruidíaz], JP [João Paulo] and Albert and Stef, we’d been in situations where things hadn’t gone our way and I think those experiences helped us in this two-leg series.”
The Sounders nearly responded instantly, with Roldan setting up a chance for Ruidíaz that led to a stunning save by Pumas goalkeeper Alfredo Talavera. The veteran shot-stopper, who now coaches young Mexican goalkeepers in a youth national team setup overseen by then-Pumas manager Andrés Lillini, was doing everything possible to add a CCC trophy to a cabinet that already included two league titles and a Gold Cup.
Talavera would be further tested by Morris, and in the 73rd minute, the Sounders had a great opportunity. Ruidíaz was in possession and pushed the ball forward in the box. As he ran onto it to cross, Pumas midfielder Sebastian Saucedo slid to try and block it. He did, but unfortunately for the Real Salt Lake academy product, he blocked it with his arm. The VAR sent the referee to check if there had been a foul just before, but the contact was minimal, and the penalty stood.
Lodeiro stepped up for a showdown with Talavera: “I knew Talavera was a great goalkeeper, a penalty stopper who liked penalties. I felt when I was about to strike it that he enjoyed trying to distract you, play a bit of a game.”
Lodeiro won the battle, beating the goalkeeper to his left even as he dove in that direction. After, the two started to chat, with Talavera blowing a kiss at one point in the aftermath.
Last-second theatrics
Just as it seemed the Sounders would take a 2-1 loss from the first leg into the second leg at home, Efraín Velarde and Roldan came together in the box late in second-half stoppage time.
“I remember the play so vividly,” Roldan said. “Oftentimes I like to hold the player off while I’m getting the ball. This play in particular, I control it and instead of letting the ball drop, I bring up my knee and get the touch off the quad and get fouled.”
Roldan went to the ground, and at first, Sounders attacker Fredy Montero was shouting at him to get up and help defend what would’ve been Pumas’ final attack. But Roldan screamed to his teammate – and the referee – that the Sounders should have a penalty. VAR intervened, leading to some skeptical moments from the Sounders.
“You see there’s contact, but when he went to VAR, I didn’t expect him to call it,” Morris said.
“There was a lot of doubt because, yes, you’re away from home. You never know what’s going to happen with Concacaf,” Schmetzer said. “I mean, the referee was brave. He saw the call and he gets it. When you watch here in slow motion, you can tell that it’s a penalty. But without VAR? There’s no chance.”
The VAR that had seemed like Seattle’s foe when Frei was called for coming off the line suddenly seemed like an old friend. Lodeiro stepped back up in the 99th minute, again went to Talavera’s left but higher, and converted to finish the match 2-2.
After the celebrations, there were more words between Lodeiro and Talavera – who was on a yellow card – and the night ended with teammates separating their captains from each other.
“When I scored the second penalty, I think I started to say things to Talavera, which led to all the shoving and those things. There’s the adrenaline,” Lodeiro said. “But converting that goal, it felt like it was a victory for us. We took a great result from Mexico.”
Looking back with a much cooler head, Lodeiro called the shoving and name-calling “normal” in that sort of atmosphere. While his teammates had his back, they also understood why Lodeiro was so passionate – and why Pumas were upset enough to risk losing a key player for the second leg.
“I know that's a really frustrating result to be up 2-0, to let that lead slip," Morris said. "These are huge moments and huge games. There’s going to be a lot of emotion on the field. You see it within the coaching staff and the players. It just shows how big of a game it is and how much both teams want to win. If the situation was flipped, I would probably be frustrated, too.
“The tension comes from, I think, knowing that we're going to have to play each other again in not so long.”
Even if the second leg would be just a week later, the charged feeling after the first leg meant it couldn’t come fast enough for Seattle. No one wanted to lose that momentum from the two penalties, especially the stoppage-time spot kick that earned a 2-2 draw in Mexico City.
“I wanted to play the second leg the next day!” Lodeiro noted. “I had the feeling of, let’s play it already, try to wrap the second game up as quickly as possible because we knew we were in good form and had a lot of confidence.”
“That felt like a win,” Schmetzer said. “For sure it did.”
Magic at Lumen Field
The Sounders were able to take that feeling and convert it into reality – despite a few nervous moments in the second leg, with 16-year-old Vargas having to replace an injured João Paulo (the second injury sub of the first half).
Still, the Sounders were able to smother Dinenno and Pumas, with Frei making a stunning save that mattered for the emotions but wouldn’t have counted because it was offside in the 43rd minute. Just moments later, Rusnák got into the box and played a pass to Xavier Arreaga, who laid off for Ruidíaz. The Peruvian forward’s deflected effort beat Talavera and took the Sounders into the half with a 1-0 advantage on the day and a 3-2 edge on aggregate.
“At halftime, they’re all talking, all buzzing and everybody’s happy,” Schmetzer recalled. “This goal releases everything, so they were very excited in the locker room. I think they could smell it, that it was close.”
It was, indeed, within the Sounders' grasp – but they wanted to ensure it and added two more goals in the second half. In the 80th minute, Morris burst free down the right wing and set up Lodeiro at the top of the box. The Uruguayan took one touch to set up a second for Ruidíaz, and the celebrations with the roaring crowd started at Lumen Field.
Lodeiro got one more over on Talavera, beating the fallen goalkeeper for an 88th-minute shot by Morris that bounced off the post and fell to Lodeiro. It was 3-0 on the night and an authoritative 5-2 on aggregate. History was made in a manner no MLS team had done prior.
Vargas had been worried about screwing it up, saying that despite the manager’s confidence the last thing he thought before stepping on the field was to not make a mistake that would ruin things for the team. Even as he celebrated after, there was relief for the teenager.
“I was happy the team won, but I didn’t realize what I’d done," said Vargas, who now represents Mexico after playing for US youth teams.
"I didn’t stop to think about what happened to me. I just thought about the team, the club and the history we’ve achieved. Three years later, I’m starting to realize that not just anybody goes into the final of the Concacaf Champions Cup as a 16-year-old kid.”
Re-defining what's possible
With far more context, Schmetzer and some of his more veteran teammates were thinking about the implications, perhaps not of the Club World Cup but of being the MLS team to finally bring the CCC title to their city.
“In 2016, there were a lot of things going on in my head, but I didn’t think for a minute that we were building a project to compete on a regional scale in Concacaf, winning a Concacaf Champions League,” said Schmetzer, thinking back to when he took over the managerial job and started to work with then-general manager Garth Lagerwey to put together a squad.
It had been a long road for the players who were brought in as well, pushing to earn things for their family, teammates and city. It may not have shown on his face at the moment with his teammates dancing around him, many draped in their nation’s flags, but Lodeiro found his moment on the stage lifting the cup to be a reflective one.
“In that moment where you go to lift the trophy, you think about a ton of things: The sacrifice you personally made to get there, to go down in a club’s history,” Lodeiro said. “You think about all the people who were with you over the course of your career, how you prepared.
"My wife, my kids, the times they went with me or wanted to help when there were important matches, friends who were keeping up with the final, the fans where you see a city in the United States that fills a stadium for a club tournament. It’s a ton of feelings and beautiful emotions that really fly by in that moment.”
Even if it's impossible to extend that moment, this month the Sounders will look to create more memories and write more of the club’s history in the Club World Cup, a tournament they’re in thanks to the heroic effort made back in April and May 2022.
From Mexico City to the Emerald City, and now to the world's stage, they achieved immortality.
