Seattle Sounders

Any MLS club in Seattle’s shoes gets blown away on Sunday against Minnesota United at Allianz Field. 

It’s an away day in mid-July with the temperature at 90 degrees. Minnesota is strong at home and hungry for a first-ever win over the Sounders at the ninth time of asking. Seattle, on the other hand, has nine players listed as “out” and has to call up two players from the Tacoma Defiance reserve team, including 15-year-old Alaskan Obed Vargas.   

This is a recipe for disaster in America’s top division.

Kelyn Rowe scored his first goal of the season to break a scoreless tie and the streaking Seattle Sounders made history with a 2-0 victory over the visiting Houston Dynamo on Wednesday night.

The Sounders (8-0-5, 29 points) established a new MLS record of 13 straight unbeaten results to begin a season. The Los Angeles Galaxy (1996, 2010), Kansas City Wizards (2000) and Real Salt Lake (2014) all opened with streaks of 12 undefeated matches.

The year that was 2020 disrupted a lot of the financial models for Major League Soccer and resulted in a new Collective Bargaining Agreement ratified back in February, but the 26th season of MLS is now underway while looking largely similar to previous editions, particularly with regards to the MLS Designated Players list 2021.

Last year, Darlington Nagbe flicked the ball up to himself and smashed a gorgeous volleyed goal that easily won 2020 MLS Goal of the Year honors. On the first day of the 2021 MLS season, João Paulo one-upped Nagbe with an even better version of the move, a stunning strike that will take some doing to prevent from being the 2021 MLS Goal of the Year.

The Seattle Sounders thrashed Minnesota United 4-0 on opening night in Seattle. The result was surprising given the intensity of the Sounders’ 3-2 stoppage-time win over United in the Western Conference Finals just a few months ago. 

The 2021 MLS season marks the return of fans to stadiums across the league and, God willing, the death of fake crowd noise. Beginning with the start of the regular season on Friday, April 16, teams across the country will welcome back supporters at grounds with capacity generally limited to somewhere between 10 and 50 percent.

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared Covid-19 a pandemic. To be as straight-up as possible, this was the day that shit hit the fan for Americans.

March 11 was the turning point for the U.S. and the moment the severity of the virus became real for so many. In the span of only a couple hours the NBA shut down, Tom Hanks tested positive and Donald Trump announced plans for a European travel ban.