Above anything else, Roger Levesque remembers the fans.
Sounders FC had survived a grueling push to the final of the 2009 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. They’d been forced to slog through a bitter road battle with the Portland Timbers in their first match before squeaking by a pair of MLS teams to reach the finale. For their reward, Sounders FC got D.C. United in the title match. If they were to win their first ever U.S. Open Cup less than six months after playing their first MLS match, they’d have to go through United. In Washington D.C.‘s RFK Stadium.
When the teams marched onto the field for the 7:30 p.m. kickoff there were nearly 18,000 fans in attendance. Most of them, unsurprisingly, were wearing black and red. But in the nether-regions of RFK’s crumbling third tier was a splotch of green and blue, Sounders FC fans rattling the rafters and causing the aging edifice to visibly shake.
READ: USOC & Seattle: Part II - How Starfire earned its USOC legend
“I was a little bit worried the stadium wasn’t going to be able to handle everything that was going on up there,” Levesque said.
That evening launched Sounders FC on a cup run that brought them three straight championships and four in six years. It had been more than 40 years since any team pulled a three-peat in the competition, and given the expanded field of competition and its professional nature, there’s a compelling argument that Seattle’s last six years represents the most impressive run in the history of the U.S. Open Cup.
But it all started on a sweaty night in the cavernous, depleted RFK Stadium. In the 67th minute, Fredy Montero scored his first ever cup goal for Sounders FC when he cleaned up a rebound to give Seattle a vital 1-0 edge on the road. United continued pressing, but keeper Kasey Keller and the Sounders FC back line held, and Levesque delivered the hammer blow in the 86th. A cross from Sebastian Le Toux, who’d scored the penalty to get Sounders FC past Sporting KC in the quarterfinals, found Levesque between defenders at the far post.
D.C. United pulled one back with a minute left, but the coronation had already begun. That small patch of fans in the third tier continued their celebration, waving flags, holding scarves and out-staying their D.C. United counterparts.
Just like that, it had begun.
“Sigi [Schmid] always talks about how you want to be the first team to do something, whether that’s win the league or win a trophy or beat a team three times in a given year,” Levesque said. “But being the first means you’re continuing to push, you’re continuing to improve. And that was our first trophy for the MLS version of the Sounders. With that first year and having been successful in the Open Cup and to give the team, city and supporters that little taste of success, I think that added to a great start to this organization in MLS.
“It made people hungrier to strive for more.”
It’s easy to see how true that sentiment became in hindsight.
The foundation of Sounders FC’s four trophies was welded together in the forges of the USL. Foundational players Zach Scott and Levesque were both on the roster in 2003 when Seattle won its first true modicum of national respect by topping the MLS-leading San Jose Earthquakes 1-0 at Husky Stadium in the tournament. More future MLS players were there in 2007 and 2008 to buttress Seattle’s run to back-to-back semifinals despite the team’s lower division status.
Nowadays, Seattle is the monolith, the empire that the rebellion is continually seeking to topple. But thanks to the efforts of players like Scott, who understand what it is to be an underdog, the underpinning of those cup runs is alive and well today.
“For a big part of our early existence, it was just proving ourselves against MLS clubs,” Scott said. “Being second division USL at the time, you were kind of looked at as not good enough to play in MLS. So for a lot of guys it was their opportunity because they had either dropped down from MLS teams or because they were trying to reach that goal. It wasn’t just the players proving that. It was the coaching staff, the front office taking the tournament really seriously and saying that if we’re going to enter this thing we’re going to always field our best team, regardless.”
READ: USOC & Seattle: Part I - Legends of the tournament
Different teams approach the cup in different fashions, but Sounders FC never shied from putting its best players on the field for midweek cup matches. Down the years Osvaldo Alonso has been a fixture later in tournaments. Montero helped earn his stripes based on his performances in cup matches. Le Toux’s Seattle legend wouldn’t be what it is without his performance in them. And in 2014 Seattle wouldn’t have won the title over the Philadelphia Union without extra time goals from Clint Dempsey and Obafemi Martins.
From Schmid’s standpoint, it’s always been about fielding a strong team or not entering in the tournament at all.
“The Open Cup is always important to me,” Schmid said. “It’s important to us as a club because of our history in it now. But it’s always been important just from the standpoint that if it’s not important, let’s not enter. If we’re going to enter, we’re going to try and win it.”
After 2009, the snowball gradually rolled into an avalanche. Just like the year before, Sounders FC got its 2010 campaign off to a rollicking start thanks to a win over the Timbers in Portland, this time in a penalty shootout Scott eventually clinched. And just like the year before, Sounders FC had to plow through three consecutive matches against MLS clubs to bring home the hardware. A Nate Jaqua brace spanning just 14 minutes gave Seattle a 2-0 win over the LA Galaxy, and Jaqua sandwiched two more goals around a Montero tally to sprint past Chivas USA 3-1 in the semifinals.
Yet again the final came down to a 2-1 decision, but this time Sounders FC had to claw from behind. Kevin Burns put Crew SC up early, but Sanna Nyassi scored the only two cup goals of his Seattle career over the next 45 minutes to make it two straight.
The 2011 and 2014 titles were similarly hard-won. In 2011, Sounders FC had to wade through another tournament against three consecutive MLS clubs before dropping the Chicago Fire 2-0 in the final behind goals from Montero and Alonso. The 2014 title was the toughest yet, with an unprecedented four wins over top division teams en route to the title over the Union.
This team has been engineered to win U.S. Open Cup titles from the very foundations of its MLS roots. When the team gets going on its title defense against the Portland Timbers at Starfire Stadium on June 16, Sounders FC will be taking the occasion as seriously as ever.
