Some sports clichés are so worn, so familiar that they can make an entire room of journalists groan and roll their eyes at the sound of them.
“Take it one game at a time” surely qualifies. And yet, there’s still value in the concept for players and teams keen to keep focus and clarity. So it is for the Seattle Sounders as they try to win their second straight MLS Cup, and their third in five years, on Saturday, an achievement that many would consider worthy of what their head coach Brian Schmetzer referred to as “the D word” in the run-up to their showdown with Columbus Crew SC (8:30 pm ET | TV & streaming info).
“Nobody inside our locker room is talking about ‘dynasty,’” said Sounders striker Will Bruin on Friday. “We can't even talk about it until after this game. And hopefully we can get a win. But I think we just take care of every game that's in front of us and that leads us to finals. Right now we're in another final, but there's still a lot of work to be done tomorrow. So we just need to make sure that we're focused and prepared for the game.”
Schmetzer has had many variations of this question tossed at him, and on Wednesday night he sought to place the Sounders in the wider context of his hometown’s sports scene – where, to his mind, the WNBA’s Seattle Storm are the standard to be measured against.
“As far as the D word, the dynasty word, I mean, folks have asked me about that,” he said. “And the Storm, the women's basketball team, has won four [championships], the Seahawks have won one, we've won a couple. I wouldn't quite put us into that dynasty category yet, until there's a couple more. I mean, we're Storm chasers, if you want to say something cute.
“But the flip side of that is, I am very proud of the success that we have had, because MLS is a league filled with parity. I mean, you go back to the last group that was able to do it was the Galaxy, back in the early 2010s, 2011, 2012 somewhere in there, 2014 I think they ended that run. And it's impressive what the Galaxy did … ever since then, it's been a different champion each year. And so we understand how hard it is just to put yourself in a position to be back-to-back champions. And we're not going to take this chance for granted.”
Midfielder Cristian Roldan pointed to the club’s solid track record of executive management, dating back to their 2009 arrival in MLS and continuing under general manager and president of soccer Garth Lagerwey today.
“The front office has made big decisions on certain players, bringing them in, letting them go, making really good business decisions at times with players,” said Roldan. "It translates to the coaching staff, and then to the players. We have a winning mentality and we see it in the decisions that they make firsthand, so really it comes from top to bottom, and the players being at the bottom, right, and having that winning culture.”
Plenty of words have been written – ahead of this game, and the many other big ones they’ve been a part of – about the Rave Green’s sustained competitiveness and the culture of success that’s sustained it. Before they were habitual MLS Cup participants, Seattle racked up U.S. Open Cup honors in the early stages of their current incarnation, and have mounted a few decent runs in Concacaf Champions League, too.
“We take a lot of pride in every game, whether it's Champions League, Open Cup, MLS Cup final,” said Bruin. “I think we're always making sure we're in a final, and I think that proves to the character of the team.”
At this point, their identity as a “big club” that expects and needs to win things is implicitly understood throughout the organization.
“It's an honor to be talked about in those terms and using that [dynasty] word,” said winger Jordan Morris, “but I think it's just a testament to how good this team has been over the last – well, the whole time the Sounders have been in MLS, they've been a great team, but especially the last four or five years, with making these MLS Cups and winning a couple and potentially winning another one. It's a testament to this club, this city, to be put in that category.
“To be honest, I think the players don't think about it too much. It's not something that we've talked about a ton. Our whole focus is not what we've done in the past, but what we're going to do this weekend, because none of that matters. It's all about stepping on the field and trying to win this game. And then after the game, you can discuss that, or we can discuss that as players if we want.”
