Hope from the Northwest.

Last night was the first game of the MLS playoffs between the Seattle Sounders and the Houston Dynamo. Seattle, MLS's newest expansion team, plays in at Quest field, home of the Seattle Seahawks NFL team. Any casual viewer of MLS is accustomed to seeing soccer being played on turf fields in massive American football stadiums which have no hope of being filled. No matter how dedicated your fan base its hard to create good atmosphere when you have 10,000 fans in a stadium designed to hold 80,000, and I'm sure little is more depressing to a player then seeing thousands of empty seats, or playing atop a field clearly marked with yard lines and an NFL crest. This is not the case in Seattle. The Sounders have averaged about 30,000 spectators a game, about double the league average. For the play off on game on Thursday the upper section of Quest field was opened to accommodate five thousand additional fans making the total in attendance just over 35,000. This summer when Barcelona came to play the Sounders, all 67,000 seats were filled. The numbers speak for themselves, soccer has a foothold in the pacific northwest.
Not only does Seattle average a respectable attendance figure comparable to some of the smaller BPL teams, (Burnley's Turf Moore seats 25,000), but the fans come decked in green, waving scarves, and singing songs, and generally behaving like soccer fans should. Its not surprise that MLS is opening an expansion team in 2011 in Portland Oregon and Vancover Canada to capitalize on the apparent soccer fever which grips the Midwest. The prospect of a Northwest derby is as tangible as it is exciting Back in the days of the NASL, the Sounders developed a fierce rivalry with the Portland Timbers and the Vancover White Caps, with the three teams meeting several times in the post season. With the creation of a Portland and Vancover teams in 2011, that sea of green could have an outlet for their passion which could establish a lasting rivalry.
There have been many "soccers gonna get big" moments in the US, but a good deal of these moments have been based around big media grabbing events, like Beckham coming to LA. If the Sounders have shown us anything, its that grassroots organizing and exciting play can motivate a crowd more then big names. Weather the northwest becomes America's bastion of soccer remains to be seen, but sea of Green at Quest field seems to imply steps in the right direction.