12:10pm -- The press conference starts with a long video with this message: "Seattle is destined to be the soccer capital of the United States and the envy of the world."
12:15pm -- Tod Leiweke, CEO of Vulcan Sports, is talking about the "four drivers" of momentum for the MLS in Seattle..
1) The league. "This is a league whose time has come," he says.
2) The partners.
3) The venue. "Qwest Field is the best sports venue in the world," he says.
4) The fans. "They have incredible passion for the team, and they also have special passion for the name."
Now he's getting to it...after 15,000 votes, the name is...Seattle Sounders FC.!!
12:19 -- Owner Joe Roth is talking about the name issue: "I told Tod, 'We're either a democracy in sports or we're not.' We wanted to show fans they have rights that fans of other teams don't have."
12:22 -- Roth on MLS: "One of the problems has been that the quality of play here hasn't been as good as the quality elsewhere...the casual fan can tell... . So one of the goals for our team is to be a team that can play on the field in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. We will travel all over the world to find players who are significant."
"My goal is to turn soccer in Seattle into the major sport that it is [elsewhere]."
He says he'll have an NFL Films-type show for the Sounders. I think I know where he could find the guys to do it...
12:26 -- Adrian Hanauer, GM of the current and future Sounders is on the mike. He's talking about carrying forward the torch of the Sounders franchise, discussing his own love affair with the NASL Sounders. He specifically mentions Jimmy Gabriel and Alan Hinton, former Sounders players, who "stayed in the area and built a foundation of soccer."
12:31 -- Introduces Chris Anderson Henderson, the former US National team player who was named technical director of the Sounders in January, says that he and Anderson are headed to Argentina and Uruguay to build relationships with agents and players.
12:37 -- Joe Roth on the Henry rumors: "If there were a player available of the caliber of Henry would we pay for him? Yes we would."
12:39 -- Roth says that 82% of the votes were for Sounders or some derivation thereof.
12:43 -- It's over now.
All on the SoundersFC.com site:
--a press release about the vote.
--a fact sheet including the banner colors, which are Sounders Blue (Pantone 647C), Rave Green (Pantone 370C), and Cascade Shale (Pantone 433C).
Monday, April 7, 2008
MLS in Seattle Press Conference : The Name is Seattle Sounders FC
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5 comments:
Yuck. Seattle already has a football club, and it's called the Seahawks. I guess the team's commitment to democracy only goes so far.
The Seahawks are a football "team." A single team. The Sounders will consist of not only the MLS side, but also youth teams, and possibly a reserve team.
Though, I would have preferred "S.C." over "F.C."
I like it, and I'm am really glad they kept the Sounders name. Can't wait until the season starts, even though soccer is really dull.
The name of the Technical Director is Chris Henderson, not Anderson.
I think the colors are a little too similar to the Seahawks...
But maybe that was intentional, my friend points out that Pittsburgh's baseball and football teams have similar color schemes, and that's created kind of an identity for them.
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