New Seattle MLS team named Seattle Sounders FC

Published 11:57 pm Monday, April 7, 2008

SEATTLE — The new Major League Soccer team in Seattle will be called Seattle Sounders FC.

About half the 14,500 fans who voted on the team name wrote in Sounders. That was about 20 percent more than the choices offered by the club: Alliance, Republic or Seattle FC.

Club officials didn’t want the traditional Sounders name, but fans had the write-in option for the team, which will begin play in March 2009 at Qwest Field.

The Sounders name has been identified with soccer in Seattle since 1974, when the city was awarded a franchise in the old North American Soccer League. That franchise folded after the 1983 season, but the brand was revived in 1994 when a team began playing in the then-American Professional Soccer League.

The APSL morphed into what is now the United Soccer Leagues First Division, one notch below MLS. The current Sounders begin their 15th and final minor league season in the USL on April 19.

“We had a good debate about whether to use the to use the Sounders name or not use the Sounders name,” majority owner Joe Roth said. “Part of our ‘democracy in sports’ (philosophy) was to give fans a voice.

“It’s a great start for the owners to trust the fans and set up a situation where fans have rights.”