For more than 17 years, you have held this club to a high standard. You expect us to compete for\u00a0trophies, entertain, inspire, provide a great matchday experience and do good for our community.<\/p>\n
Over the last several weeks, we have heard from many of you \u2013 in the concourses, through emails and\u00a0texts, from friends and family, and in conversations with supporters and Alliance Members. Some of it has\u00a0been hard to hear, but we always want honesty.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve challenged us about the team, our ambition, your connection to the club and whether we\u2019re\u00a0listening. We are. But listening only matters if we do something with what we hear.<\/p>\n
\n Your Voice<\/strong><\/p>\n Democracy in Sports is a foundational pillar of our club. It means something, especially when times are\u00a0difficult.<\/p>\n The Alliance<\/strong> Annual Business Meeting will take place September 26 at Lumen Field, from 2:00 \u2013 4:00 p.m. PT<\/strong>, before our match that evening. We’re putting it on a matchday because we want more of\u00a0you in the room asking questions, challenging us and being part of the conversation about where this club\u00a0goes next.<\/p>\n This is also a GM Vote year. The vote will run throughout October and November. Drew Carey fought for this right because he believes supporters should have real agency in their club. I believe in this organization, our team and our General Manager.<\/p>\n But this vote belongs to you. We hope you use it.<\/p>\n \n Connection to the Players<\/strong><\/p>\n We have also heard from many of you who don\u2019t feel as connected to our players as you once did.<\/p>\n The carnation in our crest represents the relationship between our players and fans. If we\u2019re going to put\u00a0that relationship into our identity, we need to live it.<\/p>\n Beginning in September, we\u2019ll create monthly opportunities for Alliance Members to connect directly with Sounders players.<\/strong> You\u2019ll hear more from us next week about the first opportunity.<\/p>\n \n Matchday<\/strong><\/p>\n When Lumen Field is at its best, there is no atmosphere like it in Major League Soccer.<\/p>\n Our next match comes Saturday against Chicago. It\u2019s our Youth Match, and because of demand, we are opening the 300 level.<\/strong><\/p>\n This has been a difficult stretch for everyone who cares about this club, but I know how this community\u00a0responds when things aren\u2019t easy. Saturday is a chance to show that again.<\/p>\n \n The Team<\/strong><\/p>\n Yesterday, we announced the signing of Dejan Jovelji\u0107. We pursued Dejan because we believe he makes us better and because he has the character to make our fans proud.<\/strong> One player doesn\u2019t erase the last six weeks, eight straight MLS losses or answer every question you\u2019ve raised, but adding Dejan, getting players back from injury, and continuing to strengthen this squad gives me confidence for\u00a0the stretch run.<\/p>\n This brings me back to last Wednesday night. After another painful loss, our supporters kept singing well\u00a0after the final whistle \u2013 about loving the Sounders and singing until our next victory.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t make the result any easier to accept. But it was a reminder of how much this club means to so\u00a0many people, and of the responsibility for all of us who continue to care so deeply.<\/p>\n We\u2019re not asking you to forget the last six weeks. And we\u2019re certainly not asking you to lower your\u00a0expectations. At this point, what we do matters a lot more than what we say. Keep holding us to that\u00a0standard.<\/p>\n Thank you for caring, pushing us and continuing to show up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For more than 17 years, you have held this club to a high standard. You expect us to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1026296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[45],"tags":[12086,221,62,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1026295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-12086","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1026295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1026296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1026295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1026295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1026295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}