No single player in the franchise’s 42-year history has never meant more to the Seattle Sounders - as a symbol, as a player, as a figurehead – than Zach Scott.
And Mr. Sounder, as he will forever be known, is preparing to ride off the field for the last time when his 15th season ends as early as Sunday.
There will be raging arguments on this topic in the years to come, especially as the memory of Scott’s on-field contribution fades and others step into the spotlight he left. How do you quantify impact, and could any one player leave behind more of a resounding imprint than Scott’s left on the Sounders?
He’s worn the team logo so much it’s practically imprinted on his chest.
Scott is retiring, an announcement he made in September that seemed to hit Sounders fans as a collective like a bag of leaden bricks. Even if everyone knew it was coming eventually - Scott turned 36 this year, after all - it was never going to soften the blow. With a congestion of center backs, Scott’s on-field role has been pared down to its smallest in terms of minutes since 2011.
And yet no player could step into Scott’s shoes. Ever. He is irreplaceable. And in more ways than one.
Scott’s measurable numbers are of course easy to trumpet. He’s appeared in 349 games for the Sounders, by far the most for any active player in MLS for any one club. He’s flouted father time, playing 93 of his 118 MLS games after his 31st birthday. And he’s been consistent, chalking up at least nine starts every year for the past six seasons. He’s gone 90 minutes for the first team as recently as Aug. 24.
But Scott has never really been about measurable. Scott was never the most broad-shouldered center back coming out of Gonzaga, and when he joined the Sounders in the USL in 2002 it took him a year to play his way into a starting role. Like every player forced to overcome a physical deficiency, Scott became smarter than everyone else on the field. He always seemed to know what his markers were doing before they did.
Over his time with the USL Sounders, Scott quickly developed into a fan favorite, morphing from newcomer to veteran team leader by the time the team joined MLS in 2009. His firm, steady presence in the locker room made him an easy choice for reporters for postgame quotes, and the field somehow seemed steadier with Scott on it.
The true testament to Scott’s career didn’t come until later. Thrust into a starting job in 2011 after mostly bench duty in Seattle’s first two seasons in MLS, Scott quickly developed into an easy first team choice over the next few years. And while his first team duties slowed again this year, he’s been as solid as he’s ever been.
There’s never been any artifice about Scott’s game. That isn’t hard to see in his movement and in the verbal cues he offers his back line teammates and his defensive midfield. He’s an old school soccer player at heart, cut free of adornment and reliant only on the bedrock of what he does well. Youth coaches (or at least the good ones) always tell players to know themselves first; strengths, weaknesses, targeted areas for improvement. You can’t shift to cover issues you don’t know exist in the first place.
Scott’s speed has never been an asset, but at his peak he had a burst of short-range agility that allowed him to compensate when an attacker tried to cut around. Early on in his career, Scott developed a knack for sussing out an attacker’s movement and beating him to his spot. Watch Scott game tape from 2012-2013, the best back-to-back years in his career, and you can see him outworking defenders before the attack even begins.
This kind of preparation - his movement, his vision, his subtle shifts in motion - allowed him to beat attackers with twice the speed and technical ability. Scott’s always been a gym rat, and the fact that he stayed in playing shape well into his mid-30’s allowed him to continue as a viable option off the bench this year even with quality at the center back position in front of him.
When combined with Scott’s presence off the field as a community advocate and front-facing representative for the organization, there’s no question about Scott’s overwhelming impact in Seattle over the last 14 years. And while other contributors will come and go, rest assured there will never be another Mr. Sounder.
